These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Troll, or LOL with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used once per hour.

Email CommentIgnore CommenterFollow Commenter

Search TextCase SensitiveExact WordsInclude Comments

List of Bookmarks

Whether one likes Russia or not, I think that everybody would agree that this country is really different, different in a profound and unique way. And there is some truth to that. One famous Russian author even wrote that “Russia cannot be understood rationally” (he used the expression “cannot be comprehended by the intellect”). Add to this some already rather eccentric politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovskii who is known to mix very rational and well-informed analyses with utter nonsense and you get the famous “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Frankly, this is just some witty hyperbole, Russia is not that mysterious. It is, however, rather dramatically different from the west, central and east European countries and even though a big chunk of Russia lies inside the European continent west of the Urals, in civilizational terms she is far removed from the so-called “West”, especially the modern West.

For example, Russia never underwent any “Renaissance”. I would even argue that Russia never really underwent any Middle-Ages either since, being an heir to the East Roman Empire (aka Byzantium), Russian roots are in Antiquity. While one could, arguably, describe the phases of western civilization as Middle-Ages -> Renaissance -> Modernity -> Contemporary era, in the case of Russia the sequence would be a much shorter Antiquity -> Modernity -> Contemporary era.

[Sidebar: you will notice that I did place the roots of the modern western civilization in the Middle-Ages, not in antiquity. The reason for this is the fact that when the Franks finally conquered the western Roman Empire they destroyed it to such a degree that the era following the collapse of the western Roman Empire is called the “Dark Ages” (Russia, by the way, never went through this millennium of darkness and, hence, she never had any need for any “renaissance” or “re-birth”). Contrary to the official historical narrative, the current western civilization has never had any roots in the Roman Empire, and even less so, Greek antiquity. The true founders of the “western world” were, in so many ways, the Franks]

I would therefore argue that while geographically-speaking Russia (at least the most populated part of it) is in Europe, culturally it has never shared a common history or, even less so, a common culture with the West. To say that Russia is “Asian” is also problematic for two crucial reasons: first, Russia, as a culture, was born from the Baptism of ancient “Rus” by Saint Vladimir in the late 10th century. The brand of Christianity received by Russia was the Roman, not the Frankish one. I don’t believe that anybody would seriously argue that Rome or Byzantium were “Asian”. So the cultural and spiritual roots of Russia are not Asian. Ethnically speaking, most Russians are Slavs, mixed to various degrees with other ethnic groups. And though I personally find the category “White” of dubious analytical value, I don’t think that anybody would seriously argue that “Whites” are Asians. That leaves us with the Russian state, the Russian polity and here, yes, I would argue that it was the Asian Tatar-Mongol (an inaccurate and misleading term, but that is the commonly used one) invaders which created the modern Russian state. The complicating factor here is that since Russia became a western-style Empire under Peter I it has been ruled by a mostly westernized elite which had much more in common with the elites of western Europe than with the majority of the Russian people. Both the 18th and 19th century in Russia were marked by a ruthless, and often violent, imposition of western political, social, cultural and religious models by the Russian ruling elites upon the Russian masses. This is a complex and multifaceted process which saw many contradictory phenomena taking place and we can argue forever about it but what is certain is that this process ended in 1917 with a bourgeois (masonic) liberal coup d’etat, followed, eight months later, by a Communist takeover and a bloody civil war. While neither the February coup nor the Communist takeover in November were true “revolutions”, the year 1917, taken as a whole, saw an immense revolution take place: one ruling class was completely replaced by an entirely different one.

I have neither the time nor intention here to discuss the Soviet period here, I have done so many times elsewhere, but I will only present my main conclusion here: there is no way to consider the Soviet period as a continuation of the pre-1917 Russia. Yes, geographically speaking the USSR more or less covered the previous Russian Empire and, yes, the population which lived in pre-1917 Russia continued to live in the new Soviet Union, but the roots of the dominant Bolshevik/Communist ideology in power were not found in ancient Russia and in the traditional Russian cultural, spiritual and religious values: the roots were imported from the West (just as the main leaders of the Bolshevik uprising for that matter). I would therefore argue that in 1917 one type of western elite (the aristocracy) was replaced by another type of western elite (the Communist Party) and that both of them were “imports” and not “Russian intellectual products”. I would even go further, and argue that the Russian people, culture and civilization have been persecuted for the last 300 years and that only with the arrival of Vladimir Putin at the helm of the Russian state did this persecution end.

ORDER IT NOW

Let me immediately clarify that these past three centuries were not uniform and that some periods were better for the Russian people and some worse. I would submit that the period when Petr Stolypin was Prime Minister (1906-1911) was probably the best time for Russia. The worst times for the Russians happened only six years later when the Lenin-Trotsky gang seized power and immediately began indulging in a genocidal campaign against everything and anything “Russian” in the cultural, spiritual or intellectual sense (this bloody orgy only abated in 1938). All in all, even with very strong variations, I believe that in a cultural and spiritual sense, the Russian nation was oppressed to various degrees roughly between 1666 and 1999. That is 333 years: a long period by any standards.

And then there is modern Russia, which I call “New Russia”. Clearly not the Russia of pre-1917, but not Soviet Russia either. And yet, a Russia which, for the first time in three centuries, is finally in the process of gradually shaking off western cultural, political and socio-economic models and which is trying to re-establish what I call the “Russian civilizational realm”. Of course, we should not be naive here: Putin inherited a political system entirely created by US “advisers” whose sole purpose was to further oppress and exploit the Russian people. The human and economic costs of the Gorbachev and Eltsin years can only be compared to the effects of a major war. And yet, out of this horror, came a leader whose loyalty was solely to the Russian people and who set out to liberate Russia from her foreign oppressors. This process of “sovereignization” is far from completed and will probably take many years and go through many ups and downs, but it has undeniably been initiated and, for the first time in centuries, the ruler of the Kremlin is not somebody whom the West can hope to subdue or coopt.

Hence the hysterical paranoia about Putin and his evil Russkies.

The West is terrified by the very real risk that for the first time in 333 years Russia might become truly Russian again.

Scary thought indeed.

Consider the record of what we can call “oppressed Russia”. It began with the defeat by Peter I of one of the greatest European military powers, Sweden, during the Great Northern War (1700-1721). If you are interested, take a look at this Wikipedia list of Russian wars between 1721 and 1917 and pay special attention to those wars listed as “defeats” for Russia and notice that with the exception of the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War and WWI Russia won all of her relevant/important wars (wars in which Russia played a major role or had a major stake). I personally do not consider that Russia lost the war against Japan (neither do Japanese historians, by the way), and in the case of WWI Russia basically self-destructed on the eve of victory. As for what I call the “Great Ecumenical War against Russia” (it united the Latins, the Anglicans and the Ottoman Muslims together), I would call it an “ugly draw” whose worst consequences for Russia were soon mitigated. Contrast this with the really important war, the Napoleonic aggression on Russia in which Russia single-handedly defeated a coalition basically uniting all of Europe against Russia. Take a look at this photo of a monument at the location of the biggest battle of the war, the battle of Borodino, and check out the list of countries allied together against Russia:

France

Italy

Naples

Austria

Bavaria

Berg

Saxony

Westfalia

Prussia

Holland

Spain

Portugal

Poland

Switzerland

German Confederation

Total: 20 nations

Infantry: 145,000

Cavalry: 40,000

Canons: 1,000

That is 15 countries against Russia. There were fewer aggressors during the “Great Ecumenical War” but three out of four of those aggressors were not just countries, but entire empires: the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire. Whether it is 15:1 countries or 3:1 empires, a pattern begins to emerge. And while during WWII only six countries participated in the initial invasion of the Soviet Union (Germany, Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia) in reality there were numerous more or less “volunteer” units which joined in.

European unity at its best indeed.

Each time Europe gathered all her forces to finally defeat, subdue, conquer and assimilate Russia, Russia prevailed and only got bigger and stronger. That despite being, in so many ways, a crippled Russia, torn apart by profound internal contradictions, ruled by an elites which the Russian masses found uninspiring at best. True, individual Czars during these years were truly popular, but the regime, the order, was hardly one I would consider as popular or representative of the worldview and culture of the Russian masses. And yet Russia won. Over and over. Despite being weak.

Some will say that this is the distant past, that the world is different today, that nobody in Europe thinks about these wars. But this is not true. For one thing, every one of those wars was accompanied by a frenzied Russia-bashing campaign in the media and literature and all these wars were represented as being fought in the name of lofty European values and against the barbaric hordes from the savage East. And in the years when Russia was not the object of a military attack she was always the object of economic sanctions under one pious pretext or another. King Solomon was right when he wrote “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun”. Gradually and insidiously, the hatred and fear of Russia became part of the western cultural identity. Considering how the West learned to fear a crippled and weakened Russia, can you imagine the terror a truly united Russia would inspire?

Do you know what Putin’s political party is called? “United Russia”, of course.

Keep in mind that during these years Russia was ruled by a hopelessly pro-Western elite and that every Russian ruler from Peter I to Dmitry Medvedev, with the exception of Alexander III and Joseph Stalin, wanted to be accepted as an equal partner by the West. But the western elites had no use for a partner or an ally, what they wanted was a compliant slave.

Vladimir Putin has made it quite clear that he has no such plans at all.

Speaking of Putin, there is something else in his rule which makes him quite unique: his real power does not come from the Russian Constitution or from the fact that he is the commander in chief of the Russian military, intelligence and security forces. If that were really the case, then the Russian elites, which are still largely pro-western, would have found a way to topple him a long time ago, with the assistance of Uncle Sam if necessary. No, is real power is in the undeniable fact that the Russian people recognize him not only as their leader, but also as their representative, if you wish, at the helm of the Russian state and in international affairs. There is a personal trust, a personal political capital, that the Russian people have given Vladimir Putin which sets him aside from all other Russian political figures. This feeling is so strong that even a lot of former political opponents have now become his supporters and that those who still openly oppose him do that with a great deal of difficulty and personal discomfort.

This personal authority of Putin does not, however, extend to Medvedev or, even less so, to the Russian government. I would argue that the Russian government is largely unpopular, as is the Russian Duma, but the lack of viable alternatives to the power of the “United Russia” Party makes this lack of popularity almost irrelevant.

If we take the word “monarchy” in its original meaning as “power of one” and if we recall that many Czars were personally popular even when their regimes were not, we could say that Putin’s rule is a kind of very traditional Russian “neo-monarchy” and that Putin has found a way to combine the external forms of democracy with the internal characteristics of Russian monarchy. Interestingly, the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has decided to create a personal guard for Vladimir Putin (you can read about this here). In order to comply with the law, these personal guards all resigned their commission and offered their services to Vladimir Putin as a person, not to the Russian President.

Needless to say, the so-called “Russian experts” in the West dismiss it all as being sign of the Putin’s “authoritarian” rule and characterize him as a “strongman” at best and a “dictator” at worst. In truth, fear and hatred are very poor advisors and it is little wonder that they get it so wrong. But then, “Russian experts” are not paid to understand Russia, they are only paid to demonize her.

So where, or what, is Russia today?

At this point in time, I would say that Russia is both a promise and a process. As a promise, she is very vague, there are numerous different ideas of what “real Russia” was or should be. She is an ideal which is more perceived than understood. As a process, Russia is much more unambiguous: de-colonization, sovereignization, resistance and the unapologetic proclamation of a unique, different, civilizational model. The days when Russians were mindlessly aping the West are apparently truly over. Some say that the future of Russia is in the South (Caucasus, Central-Asia, Middle-East, Indian subcontinent), some see the future of Russia in the East (Siberia and Far East Asia, especially China) while some see it in the North (Siberia, again, and the Arctic).

But nobody sees it in the West any more.

Of course, this is not how many Europeans see Russia’s intentions. The Poles and the Balts, especially, keep themselves awake at night with nightmares featuring a Russian invasion of a conventional or “hybrid” kind. This reminds me of a Russian joke which goes like this: a man is walking down the street when a woman on the balcony suddenly screams “Help! This man is about to rape me!!!”. The baffled man looks up and says, “Lady, you are crazy. I have no intention of raping you. Besides, I am here in the street and you are above me on the balcony,” to which the woman replies, “Maybe, but I am about to come down!”. Just like this woman, the Poles and Balts, maybe moved a deep sense of guilt mixed in with an old inferiority complex are strenuously trying to convince themselves that Russia really badly wants to invade them. Russia, of course, has exactly zero need for more land, and even less need for the rabidly hostile and frankly psychotic population of these countries. In reality, the Russian plan for these countries is simple: simply leave the Baltic states and let the Poles and the Germans enjoy their traditional love-fest. From a Russian point of view, these countries and people are not coveted prizes but useless liabilities.

In contrast, Russia cannot ignore the Ukraine, especially not a Nazi-occupied one. As for the rest of Europe, it will always remain an important economic market for Russia and a place Russians will enjoy visiting, especially southern Europe and the Mediterranean. The very last thing Russia needs is any kind of war, especially a useless and potentially dangerous one with the West. Finally, it is likely that Russia will seek to establish close relationships with those southern European countries which really never wanted to pursue any anti-Russian policies, especially Greece and Serbia. So, while not being a priority anymore, the West will never become irrelevant either.

ORDER IT NOW

The hardest and also the most interesting thing to try to guess is what Russia will become internally. Probably not a monarchy, at least not in the foreseeable future. The most recent poll strongly suggests that a majority of Russians do not want to trade a democratic republican system for a monarchy. Besides, in a country where truly religious Orthodox Christians are a minority, a monarchy really would make little sense. The problem with the current system is that it is entirely based upon the person of Vladimir Putin. In fact, I would argue that there is no “current system” at all, there is only one person, Vladimir Putin who, while immensely popular, has to deal with all of the many Russian problems is the “manual mode” – meaning personally. As soon as something escapes his personal attention things begin to go wrong. This is simply not a viable system. And just to make things worse, there is no credible successor to Putin in sight. Should something happen to Putin tomorrow morning the crisis hitting Russia would be huge. Add to this that Russians have a long history of good leaders succeeded by mediocre ones and you see how serious a threat the current “one man show” is for the Russian future. I would therefore argue that the development of a truly Russian political system (as opposed to an individual ruler) ought to be considered as one of the most important strategic priorities for those Russians who do not want their country to, yet again, become a western colony. Alas, the struggle between the “Atlantic Integrationists” (the Medvedev people) and the “Eurasian Sovereignists” (the Putin people) leaves very little time for that kind of endeavor.

So yes, “Russia is back”, but she is still very much wobbling on her feet, and unsure as to where to go next. Right now, her future depends on the fate of one man and that is exceedingly dangerous.

… his [Putin's] real power is in the undeniable fact that the Russian people recognize him not only as their leader, but also as their representative, if you wish, at the helm of the Russian state and in international affairs. There is a personal trust …

This is something very few Westerners understand and this is why even the rare ones with the right (antiwar) attitude still succumb to and parrot propaganda adjectives such as “authoritarian”, “dictator”, “strongman” and so endlessly on.

I fully sign under Saker’s understanding and explanations of history, it agrees 100% with my own. One small miss, though, is that he failed to mention that most other Orthodox Christians have shared the Russian history: the Greeks, The Serbs, the Macedonians, the Bulgarians and some Romanians. Most of these nations had elites which well striving to become Westernized, which they never could, and are still trying just like the deluded Russian Atlantic Integrationists.

Perhaps Russia is going through a cultural, religious and national Renaissance right now, but as Saker says – the roots are in Putin and a few people around him, which could disappear tomorrow. This is the main reason other friendly Orthodox Christians, such as the Greeks and the Serbs are not rushing into Putin’s embrace (which one would expect them to, considering what the West has been doing to them: bombing and financial pillaging). In other words, this Renaissance is still quite shallow – Russia needs to secure some continuity for its own sake and for the sake of its traditional friends. Great essay Saker!

I think Russia’s greatest strength lies in its closer ties with China resultant from China’s Belt & Road initiative.
Difficult to be isolated when connected as never before in modern times by a vast trade network carrying goods and cultures through most of Eurasia and parts of Africa. Russia is very critical to this enormous effort in which China alone has invested ten times as much as the Marshall Plan did to rebuild all of Europe.

I’m no expert on Russian history, but weren’t both revolutions in 1917 socialist revolutions? Kerensky was a member of the socialist revolutionary party, he pursued a policy of no enemies on the left and was arguably himself responsible for the coup in October by allowing the Bolsheviks to take control of the Petrograd Soviet.
Also, I don’t really buy the whole “mysterious Russia” idea. It’s just an excuse by people in the west for hostility to what they portray as a weird, irrational Russia. After all, if people accepted that Russians were understandable – with their own ideas and goals, but understandable nevertheless – they would have to engage in dialogue (a much abused word nowadays) instead of their knee-jerk hostility.

That astounding ( to put it mildly ) theory so spreaded in your blog by so many on Communism being a Western ideology, promoted by Western powers, fails to me taking into account the so harshly this ideology and followers have been prosecuted, slandered and finally erased from the surface of Earth by, preciselly, all Western powers that be, but mainly by the main promoter of so called Western ideology, the US.

Also it fails to me in front of the deadly attack against the USSR. If it were a Western product, why the West would pass such fatigues to overthrow it and continuing demonizing it through the centuries with an editorial effort in neo-language and re-writting of History never seen throughout the History of planet Earth?

About Stolypin being the best of what happened to Russia, that will not be for his serfs, who were those who lived in the worst conditions of all……And it was precisely the harsh repression he displayed, instead of hearing people´s rightfull demands ( as was advised by De Witte ) what accelerated the revolution and the fall of the Tsarist regime.

If you pay attention, nowadays, Mr. Putin, as was declared recently by his spokesperson, Mr. Peskov related to the last rallies in Russia, takes the trouble of paying enough attention to people´s demand and complaints, independently of the cheeky and opportunist characters who position themselves as leaders of those demands

As happens with the USSR, it seems that history reads different depending on the position, and capacity to put oneself in the place of others, of who is talking.

In the economic sense you are correct, but this also means that you misunderstood this essay big time. It is about shared history, culture and spirituality as bedrocks of a nation rather than economy and finance. But you are thinking as a Westerner, therefore no surprise.

To put in blantly for you – the US General Petraeus created ISIS by buying off Sunni resistance to US occupation of Iraq, consisting of former Saddam’s officer core dejected (left without salary) by CPA’s Paul Bremer III. Ever since, officially US has been fighting ISIS, unofficially US was letting ISIS destabilise Iraq and Syria by fighting the next Israeli enemy – the Shiites.

Similarly, the West, or more precisely Germany, supported development of Communism in Tsarist Russia, whilst the West fought the “Russian Communists” at every opportunity (more because they were Russian then because they were communists). It is true that there was a lot of dissatisfaction in Tsarist Russia due to many reasons, but there is no revolution of the dissatisfied without organization and without trainloads of money/gold.

Next thing, you will tell us that Marx and Engels, or Trotsky and Stalin were Russian, right? Sorry to say, but your understanding of history is woefully superficial. You better try to understand rather than judge.

And yet, out of this horror, came a leader whose loyalty was solely to the Russian people and who set out to liberate Russia from her foreign oppressors.

Not so much that his “loyalty was solely to the Russian people” or that he “set out to liberate Russia from her foreign oppressors”, I think, which tends to put him on a pedestal to an unrealistic and unhealthy degree. Nor is he more than mildly nationalist, in the way that any normally patriotic person without external loyalties is, naturally.

I would say rather that he is simply a leader who is actually Russian, with no personal, cultural or ideological loyalty to foreign dogmas or powers.

And that, along with basic competence, is all you can realistically expect of a national leader and all that is needed to make him a good one, as Putin has clearly been a very good leader for Russia. After that, you mostly just need good luck and not disastrously unfavourable strategic circumstances.

[H]is real power is in the undeniable fact that the Russian people recognize him not only as their leader, but also as their representative, if you wish, at the helm of the Russian state and in international affairs. There is a personal trust, a personal political capital, that the Russian people have given Vladimir Putin which sets him aside from all other Russian political figures.

Here I think you correctly characterise Putin’s position, and you are absolutely correct in identifying the key medium term problem for Russia, which is the succession problem.

I would therefore argue that the development of a truly Russian political system (as opposed to an individual ruler) ought to be considered as one of the most important strategic priorities for those Russians who do not want their country to, yet again, become a western colony.

But what would “a truly Russian political system” even look like? After, as you put it, 333 years of rule by foreign inspired elites and ideologies, where is there any cultural tradition to draw from to create such? It’s not as though the US and EU will give Russia any peace free from subversive interference in which to develop such a thing naturally.

The huge difference with the “ISIS issue” is that no ISIS operative have ever been erased from the surface of Earth by any US operative or of its allies, on the contrary, they are heavily protected by air support and other means like receiving trainning by intelligence services, last generation equipment and underground situated on the ground command centers guiding the whole “issue” in a strategical level. Not to mention the excellent first rate medical assistance they enjoy in Israeli soil.

In the case of Communism, and communist operatives/supporters/ideologues, and other people of good willing, they have been, I insist, systematically erased from the surface of Earth by not few fatigues including coups d´etat, selective, or not so, assassinations of leaders/ideologues, hijacking of their outspring in order to eliminate their footprint on this planet, and rewritting of History so as them being demonized throughout past, present and future generations as the main danger to capitalist ( wrongly considered “democratic” ) ideology, now in its rales.
Not to mention the astounding support ISIS enjoys from Western powers, mainly US, UK and its ally, Saudi Arabia, related to propaganda, with a whole set of video/film production teams and channels of distribution, as well as, for that matter, newly created NGOs, like the “White Helmets”.

A huge difference with the treatment Communism has been object from, including death-squads, Gladio stay-behind networks attacks, intelligence services´tortures, and gross mass murdering like those which took place in Latin America, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, as well as nowadays economic blockade against every nation whose people could eventually elect a leftist government, another way of mass murder, ( aka genocide ), btw.

So, not a really fortunate comparisson.

On the other hand, I agree with you in that any revolution does not become factible without organization/ideology ( goals ) and, of course, without money, this is why the Bolsheviks accepted any money coming from whoever/ wherever, in order to achieve their goals, while at the same time they achieved scaming the Western bankers and powers who, to that date, had already plundered the world in size enough.

The fact that a book like ‘Everyday Saints’ and a movie like ‘The Island’ are so popular in Russia tells me everything I need to know about what a great country Russia is.
Contrast to queer corpro-facist America. Putin may have a lot of power, but big money in America has more power.
The only difference is Putin uses his for the people, whereas Big-Corpo uses it for Satan.

In the near future the Europeans might be begging Russia to protect them from the Muslim hordes. The Anglo-Zionist Empire has done nothing to defend Europe or the US from the Muslim Horde. Does anyone think the US would be capable of defending Europe much longer anyway? The US is on the way to being ruled by Drug Cartels, plantation style. Drug Cartels have more in common with the Old South (free-trade, open borders) than anybody wants to admit. It remains to be seen whether or not Trump can stop this. Western Elites are the enemy of the West, and not so much Russia who will be too far away to matter. The more they let marijuana become part of the US economy, the less the US will be able to or even want to defend its borders, much less anyone else’s border. If Trump can’t save us I would prefer to have Putin be my leader.

They say that historically no great empire has ever made a comeback. If there is to be a first, then my money is on Russia. For me they have always been the comeback kids, when everyone counted them down and out, they found a way to emerge victorious. I am talking mainly about 1812 and 1941 invasions.

As for Russia making a comeback as an empire, territory vise they stayed an empire even though they lost large chunks of land. They still possess enough real estate to qualify them as empire. Before 1991 they used to be big fat overweight champion and now they are lean mean fighting machine. As far as west’s ambitions go, NATO is ready to accept Montenegro as a member, so they might think that they finally have the numbers to do something about Russia, although I seriously doubt it.

As in the old joke, Saker made many valid
and new points. Unfortunately, what’s valid is not new and what’s new is not valid. True, unlike the rest of Europe Russia has not gone through the Renaissance or Enlightenment.
The first university in Russia wasn’t
esablished until 1724 in Saint Petersburg,
compared to 1150 for the Sorbonne (Paris) or 1364 for the Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland).

I applaud the fact that Russia is trying to re-Christianize itself. Hopefully, that will help to reduce the extremely high levels of social dysfunction, starting with the murder rate which is more than twice the level in the United States, and astronomically high compared to the E.U. or Japan. Why do Russians kill each other at such astonishing rates? No doubt that’s due to drunken brawls. Levels of HIV and drug addiction are also very high, all lowering life expectancy to levels typical of underdeveloped countries. Russia’s GDP (nominal) is lower than that of Italy – undermining Russia’s claim to being an empire (empires belong in the 19th century anyway). Size should not be confused with significance.

Russia has been mired in a recession for two years now, and needs oil to be at $70 per barrel to balance its budget. But oil is fluctuating currently in the $50-55 range, and, as we have seen, as soon as oil reaches $55 per barrel, American shale oil kicks in keeping the price down. So Russia cannot count on oil in the $100+ range to jumpstart its economy. Meanwhile, the people, scandalized by high levels of corruption, are getting restless, and the world is still waiting to be flooded with Russian cars, Russian computers, Russian TV sets, Russian smart phones, etc. What Russia needs to develop as a country is peace and stability, and the conflict in Ukraine isn’t helping at all

Well, it appears that we mostly agree. My comparison of the Western treatment of ISIS and Communists was not to claim that these two were identical. Instead, these two treatments have a similarity at the top level of the Western stated goals being in opposition to their practice. In other words, the West helped both come about and then pretended to fight them (they fought the Soviet Communists to both contain Communism and to kill the Russians). With ISIS for example, the US only needed to send freshly printed US$, they already had the Saddam’s military structure. Lenin, on the other hand needed both the money/gold and to create a new organisational structure.

But I do think that you may still be confusing the Western stated goals and the practice. In the simplest, the West is attacking leftists not because they are on the political left then because they are an obstacle to economic and political domination. It is quite common for the West to turn around and attack its own creation, once its usefulness has expired.

I immediately stopped reading your dumb rant when you stated: “Russia’s GDP (nominal) is lower than that of Italy – undermining Russia’s claim to being an empire“.

It is one thing to claim a semi-relevant claim when a first university has been created in Russia vs. the West, because universities are mostly places of intellectual elitism. It is another to pull out some nutty claim you picked up from your Main Sewer Media that Russia wants to be an empire and then wrap up some nutty story around it.

If you had absolutely any trace of brains, you would have read and understood that Russian Government is cutting all of its budgets to balance income and expenditure, including its military budget by up to 25%, instead of again obsessing about another propagandist Western meme of what price of oil Russia needs.

Individuals such as you are simply too saturated by sewage from the Main Sewer Media to contributing anything to the discussion here.

I have heard this line that the West was not based on antiquity before. But the Renaissance, which jump-started Western civilization from its dark age, was a revival and rediscovery of the culture and history of antiquity. What Greece and Rome had bequeathed was revealed to the minds of Europe.

In the large twenty five years, I have spent up to 4 months a year in Russia, rather more than Saker. The degree of difference between Russia and the UK and say either with Germany, another country I know reasonably well do not justify claims of particular exceptionality for Russia. None of them are the USA, if that is the reference standard. Are there countries without claims to exceptionality? Even, say, Chile and Argentina manage to find differences that matter passionately to their nationalists. The top down imposition of Westernization has left Russia with its own peculiarities as did the late and the failed, because half hearted, emancipation of the serfs which can still be seen in the Russia today in the mess of the collective farms, formerly Mirs, with a gap of hate in between. The mistakes of the emancipation laid the foundations for the collapse of the Empire and the massive human disruption of rural communism.

And what about The Ukraine, surely, if Russian nationalists are to be believed, a place that has so few differences with Russia at all that it cannot be considered another country or a distinct culture? That’s why it had to be made to join the Eurasian Economic Community whether it wanted to or not.

The worst Tsar was not Alexander III as you claim through your praise of him. In a tough competition the prize belongs to Nicholas I who set up Eurasianism (to the extent of banning European languages from the education system and setting up a school in Shanghai to teach Chinese to Russians. That failed like the modern turn to China has). Nicholas launched the aggression that managed to united the English with the French and the Austrians (although the Sardinians did the fighting) with the Turks in a very improbable alliance. Nicholas reached this point by showing great diplomatic incompetence. he did build railways though; it takes genius to be totally incompetent in everything. For my money, Peter I was a strong competitor for the title with his forced modernizaton, to that extent I agree with your thesis about him.

Thule Society was a crappy völkisch “study group” of a fanciful occult ‘Ariosophy’. The alleged origin of NSDAP in the Thule Society is pure bunkum and it is really baffling that people still believe it.

Poles can’t stand any apology to Russia. That’s because Poland itself is a model of failed Russia, a realized whatif scenario of Russia being part of the West. Being part of the West, you cannot into space, and you cede everything to the West, and lose territories, fame, dignity, freedom. And Russia is not your Polish or Western personal army. I personally like zubrovka, the only recognizable product of Poland. Yet I don’t insist on flooding the global market with it.

Well, after the defeat in WW2, with the reparations bill still being extracted from it, Germany has come alive with an empire, all without a large army. Every European nation today kowtows to it, with ONLY the UK trying to extricate itself, and remain part of the Anglosphere, though under Zionist control, all but forgetting their Christian heritage.

I am categorically skeptical of Russia haters. They have cried “Wolf” a few dozen too many times. And yet they persist. It’s like a rash. Or whack-a-mole. It just keeps popping up. It has become farce.

I have long argued that Putin is one of the few rational leaders in the world. I think he could be a great ally to the USA. But that assumes that we have rational leaders, which have been in short supply.

It has been appalling to watch in the last fifteen years, as America has smashed regime after regime, and then pointed the finger at Russia, saying “EVIL!!!” If it wasn’t so heartbreaking it would be laughable.

Some unfortunate shortcomings of your ‘historical’ review: Russia went through ‘ages’ much harsher than the so-called Middle-Ages in western Europe. By the way description of these 7-8th or 10-15th centuries as Dark Ages is a ridiculous myth spread particular in Anglo-Saxon world, without any serious basis. It was adopted in second half of 19th century by renown historian Michelet, motivated by his personnal anti-christianism. American historian Charles Haskins as early as 1927 debuted this myth in his famous book “Renaissance of the Twelfth century”, whoever has grown and lived in the shadow of early Gothic cathedrals in France or Italy, knows and feels how this “Dark Age” period exhales and gives off knowledge, brightness, culture and enlightment. Conversely and sadly the same period in Russia exhales ruins, sacrifices and cultural hibernation: from great Mongol Batų (1243) to Ivan III victory over Mongols (1480) that’s over 200 years of occupation during which all constructions of stone made houses and building were forbidden. During invasion, half of the Russian population died!!.. Who has ever seen the wonderful movie ‘Andrey Roublev’ from Tarkovsky can have an idea of this disaster. Besides, the patriarch Nikhon reforms in 1666 are entirely rooted in the search for original Greek tradition, which is somehow a kind of Renaissance. So Russia has gone through dark age and has lived Renaissance!

I’m not so sure about irrational. Have you read any translated transcripts of Putin’s speeches? He is probably the most rational of all of the world leaders whose speeches we get a chance to hear or read, from what I can ascertain.

Saker’s writing does have a tendency to attract trolls and fools. Just two questions for this fool:
1) Where did you find that Saker called the Russians exceptional? He used the word different. It is you Anglo-Zionist fools who call yourself exceptional not the rest of humanity.
2) Did you learn about the Russian culture by binging on Moscow night clubs, Vodka and prostitutes? And that, of course, qualifies you better for understanding Russia than Saker.

When you write that Germany supported communism in Russia, is it possible that you mean German banking elites supported communism? I had always thought that the German people and culture abhorred communism and were very concerned about its spread to Germany. Please correct me if I have that wrong.

Let me understand your logic – Dark Age in the West did not exist (it is a single historian’s propaganda), but Russia lived it anyway because you saw this in an artistic movie. Russian religious exploration of its Byzantine roots is the Russian Renaissance after the Russian Dark Age.

Please refer to my previous comment about who Saker’s comments tend to attract.

Surely the twelfth century Gothic cathedrals and “renaissance” was more due to the esoteric knowledge brought back by the Templars than any thing else? This knowledge was not shared outside of their initiates even while they had power. It was then driven even further underground when the Vatican and its flunkeys tried to wipe them out. True?

I don’t disagree with you, my comment was about people in the west being hostile to Russia because they claim it is irrational and mysterious.

For what it’s worth, Putin seems to me quite reasonable and sensible. I don’t think I would agree with many of his policies if I were Russian, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is a sensible statesman.

Great article and a good analysis. I suppose that by “modernity” you mean the 17th/18th-century Enlightenment (what Paul Hazard termed “crise de la conscience européenne”) and the ensuing freemason-inspired French and other revolutions. It would mean that, for instance, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia would also be like Russia, which would explain the many visible and invisible links between these peoples and Russia.

With regard to the Franks and their heritage, one needs to be somewhat cautious. German historian dr. Heribert Illig has a strong base for suggesting that Charlemagne and the Carolingians (including Pippin the Short and Charles Martel as well as his own descendants) have been invented by clever scribes at the court chancery of Emperor Otto III (996-1002). Illig states that almost three centuries were created out of thin air (the entire period 614-911).

If Illig is right, it would mean that the ties between late antiquity and the Middle Ages are not as tenuous as one would be inclined to think. Nevertheless by the 4th century AD, the Antique world had already split into two distinct parts, one Greek, the other Latin. It was Diocletian who institutionalized a division in the Empire that had long been obvious.

I should say that is the moment the “West” and the “East” became divided.

People have real difficulties to understand that the Great Moscow Synod of 1666 was a restoration of Orthodoxy threatened by ‘Westernizing’ tendencies because they don’t really understand what Orthodoxy is. That’s why they can’t understand what Russia is either.

I too think that Saker is right on with this essay and that it is a key insight to the lack of understanding between The West and Russia, especially the West. I think that this is the very argument that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was trying to make in his book “Two Hundred Years Together” which interestingly, is not available in English, tho it is reprinted in several other languages. I can appreciate too your comments, Kiza about other Orthadox Christians. Nearly all of this is missing from general American dialogue leading to profound mis-understanding.
Thanks to Saker and to you Kiza.

During WW1, when Germany was being badly pressed by English, French and Russian allies, she was desperate to get Russia out of the war.

German intelligence knew Lenin and arranged for him to be secretly infiltrated into Russia. Tsar’s Okhrana (secret service) of course knew who Lenin was, and would have offed him if they could.

It was understood between Germans and Bolsheviks that if Bolsheviks succeeded in seizing power in Tsarist Russia, they would take Russia out of the war. Which is exactly what happened.

However, as with most other ‘clever’ plans of men, Germany lost WW1 anyway, which led to the rise of Hitler, which led to the defeat of Germany in WW2, and which led to the current occupation of Germany and German people by anti-German globalists (US), who are currently busy Islamizing Christian Germany.

Nobody knows how things would have turned out in Tsarist Russia without Germans helping Bolsheviks to seize power. But maybe if Russia had stayed in WW1, defeated Germany would not be treated so harshly (by the English), maybe there would be no WW2, Russians would not lose 10s of millions of people in WW2 and Germany today would be an independent country led by German patriots, instead of globalist foreign-agent traitors like Merkel.

Wow – excellent article – I learned a great deal! I always had this kind of impression about Russia from some of the history I’ve read but it’s nice to have it systematically summarized in such a logical way.

There was a time when the Varangian Rus were providing the personal imperial guard for the Byzantine emperors. Old school tradition in those parts.

{Europeans creating Orientalsim which plunged the world into racial segregation and hatred unprecedented in human history.}

Racial and ethnic hatred has existed throughout human history.
To wit, Imperial Japan did not need Europeans to take over most of Asia in WW2, to commit the Massacre of Nanking, to kill and murder millions of other Asians – Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese. Japanese Imperialists also sex-enslaved 10s of 1000s of young women of the conquered lands, and on, and on,…….

Japanese treated the other Asians like subhumans.

btw: one of the original practitioners of ‘toxic racial hatred’ were the Mongols, who murdered upwards of 100 million people (estimated), mostly Caucasians/Caucasoids. So that there is no misunderstanding, Mongols are not Europeans.

… fails to me taking into account the so harshly this ideology and followers have been prosecuted, slandered and finally erased from the surface of Earth by, preciselly, all Western powers that be, but mainly by the main promoter of so called Western ideology, the US.

That’s easy to explain. The rulers of the West can and will pervert anything to their own interests. Then, when they have no use for a given group or ideology or whatever, they discard it or, if it seems to be getting out of control, they smash it. Happens over and over and over.

To wit, Imperial Japan did not need Europeans to take over most of Asia in WW2, to commit the Massacre of Nanking, to kill and murder millions of other Asians – Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese. Japanese Imperialists also sex-enslaved 10s of 1000s of young women of the conquered lands, and on, and on…

Caucasians/Caucasoids. So that there is no misunderstanding, Mongols are not Europeans.

Why bring in the Japanese? Or the Mongols? The white boys have no claims to innocence. A brief skimming of the works of Jospehus, Herodotus,Thucydides, Polybius, or Macchiavelli (to name a very tiny fraction of credible historians) would provide tons of insight and no need to point fingers at others’ crimes.

The brand of Christianity received by Russia was the Roman, not the Frankish one.

No, actually it was Greek, not Roman. Whatever the Byzantine emperors might have claimed, it would be absurd to call the Byzantine Empire a Roman Empire, when they spoke primarily Greek and the empire didn’t even include Rome. It could, of course, be described as a Roman influenced or a Roman descended empire, but that would put it more on par with the Carolingian Empire.

I would argue that there is no “current system” at all, there is only one person, Vladimir Putin who, while immensely popular, has to deal with all of the many Russian problems is the “manual mode” – meaning personally. As soon as something escapes his personal attention things begin to go wrong. This is simply not a viable system.

Russia has always been that way. When they have a strong, capable Czar, things tend to go well for them; when the czar is an idiot or a sell-out, things tend to go badly for Russia. Putin is a very capable czar, but he can’t live forever. Saker is very right to be worried about the succession issue.

Absolutely not. It’s not a question of logic but of undeniable historical facts. Tarkovsky’movie is only a modest illustration of this history. Russia definitely went through some dark age of its own: the invasion of Mongols. Russia saved the west already at that time and had to sacrifice its development, its history, its culture for doing so. Russia was quite advanced prior to this invasion. In 1051 Princess Ann of Kiev married French king Henri 1st. She spoke Latin and Greek, and could read and write (quite rare for a princess). Novgorod, which was not invaded by the mongols could keep its governmental structures and customs, which were also very advanced: children all went to school (we found school notebooks on birch barks), elections were democratic etc… However, all that was stopped for centuries. Far from being the fault of Russians, it was their first feat to save Christian and Byzantine culture. A terrible suffering for a miraculous result.

Mythology of “secret knowledge” is good for popular movies like Da Vinci Code and other ridiculous caricatures. The knowledge I am referring to is just the classical knowledge in architecture, mathematics, geology etc.. inherited from Greece and perpetuated with no interruption thanks to the daily work of monks in French&Italian monasteries like in Mount St-Michel the library of which keeps until today all the classical books of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. These books were known and practiced with no help of the so-called Arabic scientists and philosophers (see the book of Sylvain Gugenheim).

I would therefore argue that while geographically-speaking Russia (at least the most populated part of it) is in Europe, culturally it has never shared a common history or, even less so, a common culture with the West.

It’s certainly not about modern Russia. The history which is taught in Russian schools is the history of Europe (and the history of Russia of course). In the school course describes in detail the ancient world and of medieval Catholic Europe. But about the Eastern civilization (India, China) and Byzantium said very little.

To Byzantium the attitude is particularly bad, the word “Byzantium” in the Russian language has become synonymous with treachery, cruelty and decadence.

This attitude towards different civilizations can be seen on the example of Historical reenactment. In this area in Russia, many fans of the Vikings, the Franks, the crusaders, the Swiss, etc. But to Byzantium – zero interest.

Similarly in literature – published many books on the material of medieval Catholic Europe (fantasy, historical novels). About Byzantium, there is nothing

those toxic Europeans creating Orientalsim which plunged the world into racial segregation and hatred unprecedented in human history.

Ah, a “wonderful” thought by Edward Said’s faux-scholarship’s follower. Remarkably, if not for those oh, so “racial” and “segregationist” orientalists whom else would Islam blame its own catastrophic failures on?

As any other country, during its long history, Russia has made several blunders.

Two blunders, however, stand out:

1. When Russia had the upper hand, it should have gathered the Baltic (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) Chihuahuas and transfer them to Oklahoma, where the Native Americans were dumped by the Land of the Free and the Brave.

2. After pushing Hitler back, they should have signed a new Molotov-Ribbendrop treaty leaving Europe ( a bunch of chamberpots) to the Nazis with the stipulation they will not to invade Russia again.

Suetonius (Twelve Caesars) is the most lively and instructive read….detailing the aftermath of a civil war and the conversion of the republic into a welfare-warfare police state (empire abroad, dictatorship with a senatorial facade at home). This is roughly equivalent to American history following the civil war…..republic, civil war, police state, welfare-warfare empire. Nothing changes……

I like much of what the Saker writes, but this is a flawed essay. When Rome split into east and west kingdoms, so did Christianity. Western Europe converted to the western Roman Catholicism and Russia converted to Eastern Orthodox. Both are descended from Rome. Yes, western Rome proper was conquered by western barbarians long before Eastern Rome was conquered by Muslims, but the basis of the Saker’s premise that the West’s culture is not descended from Rome is not true. Sorry.

I much prefer Russians keep their non-European culture, if it means standing by and watching like helpless sheep their women get molested.
['Refugees' Harass Women in Russian Nightclub, Are Promptly Beaten and Sent to Prison]

“In 500 A.D. the world suddenly started cooling off. Several groups of people in Siberia could no longer live there. They headed toward Europe. One such group was the Huns. They fought the Germans living in the area of Eastern Poland and Hungry. Many Germans lived in present day Germany and remained where they were. Other groups of Germans went to areas where the Roman Empire was falling apart. One group went to Albania. The Lombards went to Italy. The Anglo Saxons went to England. One group went to North Africa. And the Franks went to France.”

Chechens “raping and killing Russians at will”?? Where do you paid anti-Russia trolls come up with this crap? Trying to scare a Westerner sympathetic to Russia, eh? I’m sure there are some Chechen criminals committing violent crimes in Russia nowadays – just like there are ethnic/racial minority criminals committing violent crimes in the U.S. and Europe, except that in Russia’s case, they are not IMPORTED IMMIGRANT ALIEN ethnic/racial minorities (or black ghetto thugs), as is the case with the U.S. and Europe. And I’m sure in the great majority of cases they’re being punished as a part of regular criminal justice. But that can hardly be called “raping and killing Russians at will”.

The most dangerously violent Chechens in Russia were/are those involved in the North Caucasus Islamist insurgency that raged through the 1990s and 2000s, which was enthusiastically supported by the West and their Gulf Arab Wahhabi allies. But that was largely crushed under Putin; and most of them are already dead. Today the Chechen autonomous republic is ruled by the loyal strongman Kadyrov who dispatches Islamic terrorists without much ado; and the whole area is pretty tranquil overall.

I much prefer Russians keep their non-European culture, if it means standing by and watching like helpless sheep their women get molested.

It’s not Russia’s culture that is non-European, it’s Europe’s present day culture that is non-European as judged by European culture prior to WW2.

Today, Europe has a culture of self genocide imposed by globalist interests intent on destroying the democratic, sovereign nation state, beginning with the most powerful one,s namely those of Europe and North America.

since historical memory is largely short, I wonder about claims, for most folks including Russians, that 300 years , etc. means much.

The most compelling argument to me is that communism/Leninism’s 75 years or so of totalitarianism and associated corruption is the fundamental with regard to how Russians think and behave today.

Communism corrupted folks, everywhere it existed. Lie, bribe, go along to get along, form gangs for self-defense and scamming…that is hard to overcome. Cynicism, etc.

It would be interesting to compare the various countries in East Europe, presumably more or less Western in civilizational terms, that were communist, to Russia.

Which have recovered the most, or the least? East Germany comes to mind as a good study, assuming that genetic and long term civilizational factors are the same. I read that East Germany is still somewhat in the basket-case department.

Some good insights by Sacker safe as usually his musings about Soviet period and Soviet leaders starting with Lenin.
Putin is clearly popular leader enjoying trust of the majority. The issue however what’s after him as he like every other human is mortal. After such giants like Lenin and Stalin there was degenerate like Khrushchev and then even worse Gorbachev. Russia imho doe snot have luxury for another moron in power hence this issue is extremely important one.
Another would be reversal of catastrophic, ruinous privatization which basically sucked life out of Russia and keeps Russia wobbling as Sacker put it. It is the lack of resources for the state to deal with and plan and execute plans for developments and improvement of life of regular Russians which is strategical issue. The state plainly lacks resources for all this because most of resources are in so few hands.

Yes. They were built with French loans. They were significant in establishing Paris as a financial centre that once rivalled London. And yes, Nicholas was first and foremost a military engineer so most of the lines had military purposes; more like suppressing rebellion in Poland than defending against invasion. He also made sure the St Petersburg to Moscow line was built.

However, the rails were mostly imported; many came from Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. Not until, John Hughes, the son of the chief engineer at the Crawshay works in M.T. was enticed to what is now Donetsk, did large scale railway building hit its stride. Hughes also made steel plate for Russia’s dreadnoughts.

The Thule Society’s contribution was the difference between Nazism and Fascism which as Mussolini, Franco and even the Lebanese Falange demonstrated, not to mention Abraham Stern, was not antisemitic nor anti-christian. Nazis to a greater or lesser degree were both.

Oh yes, indeed. The first Russian railway linking St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo was an immense threat to the West! And the second railway Moscow-St. Petersburg was an even greater threat to West if it had to go to war to check Russia’s threat to… Crimea, which was recently snatched from the Turks!
If it was a real threat to the ‘West’ (aka the interests of England in their overseas territories) then it was the Transsiberian and the Chinese Eastern Railway, built by the Russians. The West had to arm the Japanese to go to war to stop the Russian ‘aggression’.
And what the new Silk Road railways are if not the most severe threat to the West?

I think the meaning of Roman is a matter of period. First there was Christianity across the Empire, as in for example, Celtic Christianity. This was the original Roman Christianity, without much formal organization. The Roman patriarch being one among equals, although some places did not have patriarchs.

Frankish Christianity is the idea that the Pope in Rome is the head of all Christian churches. This was never accepted in the East where the various patriarchs considered each other equals. Celtic Christians were blocked off from the East by the Franks and at the Synod of Whitby came to accept the Frankish variant with a new date for Easter and a Pope as leader. I think this is what Saker means. An innovation in the West and continuity with Roman Emperor Constantine’s tradition or even older forms everywhere else.

And yes, the East was Greek although the formal language in Byzantium was still Latin – The Laws of Justinian for example were in Latin.

Thank God for that. Most normal people could stand Moscow’s excitement for only so long before getting a complete sensory overload and an urgent desire to catch electrichka out of this place. My standard “term” shrunk from about a month when I was younger to about 10-14 days at most today.

I understood your original intent, because you specifically mentioned classic greats such as Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, or Dostoyevsky,….,Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Prokofiev , Shostakovich, Stravinsky. I.e. long before the present rot in (Western) Europe took root.

I just used the opening you provided to bring up – again – what Europe has become today. Not in response to you, but for the general readership of UNZ.

It was a toy railway and you know it. And then nothing was built for years.

Russia lost an entire army without firing a shot in the Crimean campaign for lack of a railway. Just like Russia lost an army when it joined the French to invade India in 1801. Russia has a lot of bad roads you know. There’s a second part to that isn’t there? The Crimean war was not a western attack on Russia. It was a reaction to the Russian attack on Bessarabia and Russian claims on Constantinople and Jerusalem. Nicholas tried really hard to provoke every country in Europe at some point or other. Sometimes it worked.Maybe that two part proverb about roads meant Nicholas?

The Japanese armed themselves. The modelled themselves on the best in class. British navy and cotton factories, Prussian army and schools. Russia lost the struggle to colonize inhabited Manchuria but did get the uninhabited bit, after the Chinese population somehow walked into the rivers in winter. Xi mentioned “unequal treaties” in his inaugural speech; He wasn’t discussing Hong Kong.

Chinese interest in Russia is transactional. Have you noticed Siemens is the railway engineering partner again after the head of Russian Railways was sacked? The Chinese offered Russia’s own currency swap roubles back to finance the package. Something of an insult.

The Silk Road is great. More trade=more money around. Prosperous countries make better customers. The more important sea route was never much to do with silk. The Spice Route would be more appropriate as a name. The North South corridor, a Russian project, is good too. Through trains to Bombay if Pakistan gets a big enough cut but Bandar Abbas is good enough. A poor, isolated Russia is in no one’s interests, at least in the Old World.

I never had the displeasure. Vodka and drunk women are not my scene. Welsh Puritan me, we still exist. Others (Peter Lavelle hangers on I know) have talked about the Black Duck, Rampant Boar or some such place. Free drinks and male strippers for the student girls to put them in the mood for the expats paying the full entrance fee.

In Saratov, I had enough trouble trying not to excessively encourage completely sober young women of good reputation. Especially completely sober women of good reputation. Usually my landladies. They are very good cooks on the whole. They cook from the ingredients not a package in site.

Well, Russia does take Eurovision rather too seriously. And Russian commentators seem to have forgetten Tatu, Dima Bilan and Philip Kirkorov’s participation. Tatu in particular were leading edge LGBT in their time although a totally cynical commercial creation.

And the Russian day in London Fashion Week is usually a big event. A large number of the models are Russian or Slavic anyway. The whole modern fashion industry was invented by White Russians in Paris.

True but ESA leaves all others in the dirt when it comes to unmanned exploration and non military applications. ESA supply rockets kept the ISS fed after Columbia. The cost of it killed my technology transfer contract with them. No money left.

Russia lost an entire army without firing a shot in the Crimean campaign for lack of a railwa

Which brings up the question of how Russia managed to hold on to Sevastopol for 349 days of siege, without “firing a shot”. Especially when one considers that this “not firing a shot” involved such people as Leo Tolstoy, who, accidentally was “not firing” shots from his artillery battery (4th and 5th Bastions) and left his pretty damn famous Sevastopol Sketches. Remarkably, one of the greatest historians of our time, Correlli Barnett, no less, dedicated the whole book to a Crimean Campaign (aka Crimean War) but apart from that renown historian describing very many shots firing in that campaign, there was also an American officer, major Delafield who stayed with Russian Army and, actually, wrote things which contradict your statement. In the end, if anything else, Iron Maiden left us with amazing piece of power heavy metal called Trooper, where they, using descriptive instruments of virtuoso guitar playing by Adrian and Dave, combined with thundering voice of Bruce describe exactly how Russians fire shot after shot at the Light Brigade. So, I am confused. I also wouldn’t consider a retreat to the Northern Side of Sevastopol to be the loss of a “whole army”.

True but ESA leaves all others in the dirt when it comes to unmanned exploration and non military applications.

So, that is why it still can not completely finish its Galileo Satellite Navigation, while GPS and GLONASS are long ago fully operational. Hell, come to think about it–I was using Parus and Tsikada in 1981 before ESA even knew what Satellite Navigation was. Of course, it was created in 1975. As per “others”, I think NASA’s unmanned exploration of space is outstanding (even Cassini is partially a NASA design) so I would be very cautious using such terms as “in the dirt”.

ESA supply rockets kept the ISS fed after Columbia.

Yeah, I think Russians have their own idea about that and they will not corroborate your story.

I, actually, had in mind attending cultural places such as Tretyakovskaya Gallery, Bolshoy and, in general, massive Moscow’s theater and museum scene. I also meant dining and things of this nature. How vodka and drunk women factored in here, I have no idea.

Not a shot? How then was the glorious “Light Brigade” nearly totally annihilated?
From some memoirs of the participants:
“Despite withering fire from three sides that devastated their force on the ride, the Light Brigade was able to engage the Russian forces at the end of the valley and force them back from the redoubt, but it suffered heavy casualties and was soon forced to retire. The surviving Russian artillerymen returned to their guns and opened fire once again, with grape and canister, indiscriminately at the mêlée of friend and foe before them”.
Or,
“We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile, with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen upon our flanks.
As we ascended the hill, the oblique fire of the artillery poured upon our rear, so that we had thus a strong fire upon our front, our flank, and our rear. We entered the battery—we went through the battery—the two leading regiments cutting down a great number of the Russian gunners in their onset. In the two regiments which I had the honour to lead, every officer, with one exception, was either killed or wounded, or had his horse shot under him or injured. Those regiments proceeded, followed by the second line, consisting of two more regiments of cavalry, which continued to perform the duty of cutting down the Russian gunners”.

OTOH, how much of a threat was a ‘toy railway’? It was built in 1837 and then ‘nothing was built for years’. Well, exactly five. The construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg railway started in 1842 and finished in 1851 (double tracked).
The Crimean War was started by the Ottomans which declared war on Russia pushed by the British. It was not a ‘reaction to the occupation of Bessarabia’ for the simple reason that Bessarabia was a Russian possession from 1812. You mean the Danubian Principalities, but we know that British knowledge of these remote parts of the world are limited to Transylvania of Dracula (in fact Lloyd George did not know even where Transylvania was located!).

European Civilization in Europe is by now absolutely dead. It took a long time to die, which is why most people fail to realize what has been going on. The dying process began in 1914, accelerated between 1939 and 1945, and was completed in the 1990s with the universal adoption of the neoliberal gospel.

All the arts are also utterly dead, whether it is literature, music, painting, architecture, film, or any other creative, esthetic endeavour.

Science is dead, too, because academia has become corrupted to the bone: it is possible to get any result you wish, backed up by “research”, as long as you pay the right price. Criminal organizations like NATO, Monsanto, Bayer, GSK and similar gangs and syndicates are making good use of academic prostitution. European academics do their handiwork for lower wages than their colleagues across the Atlantic in the US.

European Culture, on the other hand, is still alive in a few places outside Europe: Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow), South America (Buenos Aires, Montevideo), and perhaps in a few isolated pockets.

Russia is the last great hope for mankind. Only Russia, under a competent leader, can bring European Civilization back to life much like the Macedonians once salvaged Greek Civilization.

You can see the enormous progress made over the past decade, with many areas halving their murder rate in just a few years. Moscow and St. Petersburg (now 2.8 and 3.8, respectively) are now *way* safer than most large US cities and are pretty much on the level of the main European capitals, perhaps even better (especially keeping in mind the kind of demographic that’s moving into Europe now).

Note that some large US cities are 10 or more (!) times as dangerous as Moscow and St.Petersburg, e.g.: St. Louis: 59.3, Baltimore: 55.4, Detroit: 43.8, etc. Even the rich, “safe” US cities tend to have murder rates that are slightly higher than theirs: Boston: 5.7, New York: 4.1, San Francisco: 6.1.

Of course there are no millions of muslims from Central Asia living in Russia. Of course there are no hundreds of thousands/millions of muslims in Moscow as it is far from any lands were Allah worshippers are endemic.

Despite today’s terrorist acts. As a cultural place? Stunning, even more so than Moscow. There is a reason it is Europe’s #1 tourist destination. There is also a reason why St. Petersburg’s hotels are more expensive than in Moscow, damn it.

I think that this is the very argument that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was trying to make in his book “Two Hundred Years Together” which interestingly, is not available in English, tho it is reprinted in several other languages.

I am not sure what you mean by that (‘the very argument’).

Other languages：not Japanese.

A group is making an English translation, they are moving quite quickly! I have only read two chapters to now (but will continue), and they didn’t help me to see what you mean. You may be pleased to find the URL below, I was surprised to find it.

What is it about Russian Jews that makes their Russophobia limitless?
Anna Nemtsova, a daughter of the late Boris Nemtsov, could not help yourself but to gloat about the today’ tragedy in St Petersburg, Russia. This “expert” from Atlantic Council has published her report less than an hour after the terror had stuck at a subway. Ms. Nemtsova found no better ways to tell about the tragedy but to castigate Russians (specifically Putin) for “cynicism.” If this is a spirit towards Russians that she learned from her family while growing up, than it is no wonder that Nemtsov (a darling of Yeltsin) had a 2% approval rating in Russia.
Here is the presstituting opus that Ms. Nemtsova has produced with amazing speed; the sufferings of the victims and the anxiety of Russians are seemingly of no concern for her: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/03/a-bomb-hits-russia-s-st-petersburg-metro-conspiracy-theories-follow.html?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
Those two, Anna Nemtsova and Michail Weiss (also from Atlantic Council and also grew up in Moscow) illustrate the extremes the Russian Jewish are ready to go to to make their living.
RT on the tragedy: “10 killed, dozens injured in St. Petersburg Metro blast”

By far not all Russian Jews are that Russophobic, but many of them who moved to the West and revolve around all kinds of media outlets and a la-la land of American “think-tankdom” (aka “intellectuals”) are Russophobic to the point of mental illness, so they fit in extremely well, since many in WASP “elites” are also Russophobic to the point of mental illness. This is a match made in hell. The faster the myth of USA standing up to “Communism”, while caring about Russian people, in the Cold War will be discarded on the US side (in Russia such statements are viewed today with laughter to the face), the faster other, very dangerous illusions, will be dispelled.

In an interview that I remember hearing, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn expressed his frustration with American lack of knowledge about the difference between Western Christianity and Orthodox Christianity, stating generally that the West well never understand Russians until they understand that difference.

From the rough translation that I read, Solzhenitsyn makes a very clear differentiation between the Jewish Intellectuals leading the Russian Revolution, doing his best to separate their interests from the very clearly different Russian People.

Saker, here is telling us that the Russian People may only now be coming to grips with what they want to be politically and economically.

To be fair, Russians seem to know about as much about Americans as Americans do about Russians.

Russians are on the order of magnitude more aware of what is going on in US than the other way around. It is cultural. Not to mention, and I never thought in my life that I would say that, a whole spectrum of Russian political shows (from analytical to talk-shows) keeps Russians abreast of the world in general, and US in particular, on the level of journalism and expertise US media can only dream about, I mean it. Not even in the same league.

Solzhenitsyn’s book was published in 2001 and immediately translated in numerous languages. except English. We are in 2017 and the English speaking people are unaware of its existence, let alone of the content. In the English speaking world it was immediately ‘refuted’, declared unreliable, anti-Semitic and practically put on the list of forbidden books. No wonder that you can’t understand the ‘very argument’ of the book. But it is well understood by those who read the book and have the background historical knowledge (because they lived that history, they experienced it on their own skin).

It is revealing that such people refer to themselves as “Russian Jews” rather than “Jewish Russians.” Russian means residence or citizenship in Russia when it serves their purposes, while Jewish is the core identity and the only ultimate loyalty.

If your own people won’t look out for themselves, sure as Hell no one else will. That’s why the Europeans are going extinct: too many totally ignorant, damn fool liberal morons urging one another on to self-destruction through suppressed reproduction and mass replacement immigration.

I’m sure that’s right. Even the “well educated” white American, European, and Asian people I spend most of my time with, typically know almost zero about Russia. To the point of not being able to name three cities in Russia, not ever having learned that we and other western countries sent troops into Russia during WW One and White versus Bolshevik revolution time, not knowing that Ukrainians speak Russian, etc.

I saw some left wing jackass marching past us in downtown LA shortly after Inauguration Day, carrying a sign that said DEPORT TRUMP TO RUSSIA. The sign bore a, wait for it, hammer and sickle next to the word Russia. On top of the general ignorance, the irony of some selfidentified “progressive” / leftist trying to insult Trump by associating him with hammer and sickle, is outstanding.

Saker or fakir?
Although I despise the Trumpians, I also think the current Democrat-neocon obsession with Russia`s supposed influence on the U.S. election is dangerous and provocative nonsense — and shows truly pedestrian form from a party simply unable to come up with a good excuse for losing to such a moron as Trump. Nonetheless the Saker invents a history of his own here with several convenient excuses for Russia`s traditional failure and incompetence as a nation.
Where to start? And how to stop once I do start? It`s virtually pointless.
But let me make just two points: 1. Saker’s argument is typical of the Russian habit of blaming everyone else for their own misfortune. Russia ruled by the West from 1666 to 1999? Absolute rubbish. Although communism may have its roots in the Western intellectual tradition — Marx after all was German — Lenin and the Bolsheviks who applied its tenets to Russia were mostly Russians. This system set in motion by Lenin was then formalized by Stalin, Bukharin et al (“Socialism in one country”) and remained in place through the entire Soviet period. This was hardly just another period of Western colonial rule over Russia. Yes the West does share much of the blame for stirring up the current mess by meddling in the immediate post-Soviet period, and in the current period, but during the Soviet era the West was no colonialist. It was Russia’s bitterest enemy.
2. Saker’s crude reading of historical developments is typical of Russian thinking and possibly one of the biggest reasons why, despite several crude efforts at fitting in to Europe and the West, to this day nobody trusts the Russians. I’ve read about and travelled extensively in the former East Bloc and Soviet republics and the one opinion I’ve heard over and over again — almost without exception — is that the people do not like or trust Russians. In fact, although Nazism is considered by a wide consensus in the West to have been the most egregious example of Western incivility and brutality, it pales in comparison to everyday life in the former Soviet republics and East Bloc. Everyone I’ve talked to other than the hardest and crudest Russian xenophobes say that as bad as the Nazis were, they were infinitely preferable to Russian rule. Yes the West is a mess and hardly above reproach, but Russia is still a couple of centuries behind in almost every way.
There you have it. Grow up Russia and Saker. As it has for hundreds of years, the world continues to await your political maturity and arrival in the community of civilized nations.

It is pretty pathetic situation that in the anglo-sphere Solzhenitsyn’s book is being translated in secret by anonymous translators (can they be trusted?) and made available at some obscure website. I wonder when are they going to be raided by American Okhrana or is it NKVD and have their work confiscated.

You don’t sound all that “well educated” anyway. You sound like an overpaid techie who read a couple of books and now has an “opinion”. What Europeans do you spend time with in LA? Did you ever approach that “left wing jackass” and do anything about it?

You know, Trump should go to Russia. He talks a whole lot about how great Russia is, but then he never did any permanent business there. Maybe you, little suchka, should go there, too, with him, set up a business there, something other than Miss Russia pageant.

Communism HAS its roots in the “West” of Russia and its ‘creators’ were not Russians, but international Jews who hated Russia with passion. Marx was a Jew, Lenin was a Kalmyk- Jew, Trotsky was a Jew, Kamenev was a Jew, Zinoviev was a Jew, Kaganovich was a Jew, Radek was a Jew, most of the founders of the Comintern were Jews. Most of them only superficially ‘Russian’, they were mostly ‘Polish’ Jews, fresh from their shtetls. And those who were not, were married to Jewesses (Stalin, Bukharin among others).
The ideas expressed by Nikolai Berdyaev that:
“The Russian people did not achieve their ancient dream of Moscow, the Third Rome. The ecclesiastical schism of the 17th century revealed that the muscovite tsardom is not the third Rome. The messianic idea of the Russian people assumed either an apocalyptic form or a revolutionary; and then there occurred an amazing event in the destiny of the Russian people. Instead of the Third Rome in Russia, the Third International was achieved, and many of the features of the Third Rome pass over to the Third International. The Third International is also a Holy Empire, and it also is founded on an Orthodox faith. The Third International is not international, but a Russian national idea”, are absurd, although they still have a tenacious grip on any interpretation of the ‘Russian soul’, by the ‘West’ especially. It may come as a shock for many, but the ideas of ‘Moscow as the Third Rome’ and of a supposed ‘Russian messianism’ are themselves of Judaic origin! Russian Orthodoxy was much more ‘pedestrian’ in reality. The diffidence of the Russians towards the ‘West’ is the result of its numerous aggressions against Russia and of the insufferable arrogance with which the same ‘West’ treated Russia and Russians. There is a much simpler psychology at play than the psychoanalytical babble about ‘convenient excuses for Russia`s traditional failure and incompetence as a nation’ (which is another expression of the idiotic puffed-up Western arrogance).

Stalin was not Jew and that’s why he turned to “Socialism in one country” (which was Russia), for which he was so furiously denounced as a ‘Russian nationalist’ and ‘Stalinism’ denounced as ‘red painted Nazism’.

Is “Everyday saints” the same as “Unsaintly saints” by Archimandrite Tikhon? I’ve seen the latter for sale at commuter train stations, in the same shop where you buy candy bars and fashion magazines. Quite extraordinary.

I had guessed the reasons it is not available in English and knew roughly when it was published. As I said, also not Japanese to my knowledge.

No wonder that you can’t understand the ‘very argument’ of the book.

I did not say that. Do not put false words imto someone’s mouth so you can jump down it to the throat in a storm of misplaced condesenscion.

Was only saying that the parallel Norcal drew with ‘the very argument’ at the start of this thread was not comprehensible (and, I would add, not correct). Read it, and read the post by Kiza that it was replying to, *then* tell me that ‘the very argument’ had anything to do with the central matter of Two Hundred Years Together.

I am not stupid just because my English breaks down at times, and am *very* widely read. There are the several points where I could have added useful info. to the thread, but it is too long, and work tomorrow, must sleeping, as last night.

Sure, if you can’t blame the West, then blame the Jews — albeit Russian Jews, who were not real Russians of course because they were Jews. So of course “Russians” are not to blame for the mess of Lenin and Stalin. And they won’t be responsible when the Putin regime implodes and chaos again reigns. He will be depicted as a Western agent. Again, your Russian chauvinism is on full display.
Trust me, I am no apologist for the West. It still has a long way to go on the civility front — and in the case of America, is apparently going backwards presently. But at least there is a modicum of the rule of law, democracy, freedom and equality, material wealth and cultural development, albeit all distorted by a corrupt capitalist ruling class whose days are numbered. And don’t get me started on the neocons. Russia is a violent kleptocracy run by thugs for their own benefit only, a place where life is cheap, cheaters prosper and where only the jingoists want to remain. Everyone else has given up. Putin is using the same old tricks of the Tsars, Stalin and countless other thugs like Hitler, Mao and Trump — generate fear of the other by appealing to the racist, xenophobic soul of the people and you will succeed. Like America, unfortunately, Russia heading backwards. God only knows where this will all lead.

The real question is Why did WWI start in the first place? It is fairly well documented the Wilhelm implored cousin Nikki not to mobilize, recognizing that once set in motion, the wheels of war would be difficult to stop. Then there is the other cousin George V, writing to Foreign Secretary Grey, directing him to find a reason to go to war with Germany.

As for WWII, despite the non-aggresion pact with the Soviets, there was a massive military buildup with only one purpose in mind – invading Germany and the rest of Europe. The German invasion was preemptive.

The world wars were never about Russia, they were about exterminating Germans.

Wow: so President Trump is now a, quote, a ‘thug’ like Hitler, or Mao?

You invalidated all other arguments in your post by that line alone.
How many people has Trump killed or murdered exactly?
What about American citizens?
Your (allegedly) non-racist, non-xenophobic, bi-racial, Kumbaya former POTUS Obama went to town killing hundreds of foreigners via Predator drones during his 8 years.
He also ordered the murder of at least 2 US citizens: the murders were executed successfully by the CIA. (Anwar al-Awlaki and his son).

btw: neither Hitler nor Mao were, quote, ‘thugs’: they were powerful dictators who had the ability and the will to kill and murder millions.
Despite being evil men, they were very intelligent and convinced 10s of millions of their people to follow them.
No mere thug can rise to that level.

{…there was a massive military buildup with only one purpose in mind – invading Germany and the rest of Europe. The German invasion was preemptive.}

A revisionist, neo-Nazi, neo-Hitlerite meme created to rehabilitate Hitler and Nazis, and blame their genocidal crimes – including the invasion of USSR and the murder of millions of Slavs (in addition to other Untermenschen) – on anybody and everybody but themselves.

The myth of the alleged planned Soviet invasion of Nazi Germany has been thoroughly debunked by historians specializing in the period and the subject.
Notably American military historian Col. David M. Glantz.

So of course “Russians” are not to blame for the mess of Lenin and Stalin.

The hell you are talking about? What mess? You clueless, ignorant propaganda victim. Lenin and Stalin made Russia a superpower, without the rapid industrialization, WW2 would have ended worse for Russia than WW1 did. Thanks to that Soviet legacy even today Russia is able to stand up militarily to the west. As for your wishful thinking that after Vlad, chaos would resume, I think that today US is much closer to that description than Russia.

So enjoy your freedoms, you are on the right track, the more freedoms you have the more world hates you and doesn’t want to be like you – according to that intellectual titan G.W. Bush. Your grasp of reality is better suited for discussion on some MSM sponsored sites, not this one.

No one is “searching” for Russia. The rest of the world would just like it to stay where it is. But, to paraphrase Putin’s role model Trotsky: You may not be searching for Russia, but Russia is searching for you. Witness these preparations for war:

Recent Russian actions suggest a new stage of the Russian threat to Ukraine—and potentially to the Caucasus, Belarus, or the Baltic States as well—that could presage a new large-scale military operation.

[MORE]

First, in 2016, Russia created twenty-five division formations and fifteen brigades, while raising manpower by only 10,000 men. This suggests the possibility that Russia may aim to wage protracted large-scale war using the Soviet model, with a Soviet-type army composed of “skeleton units” that existed solely on paper until they were called up as part of the process of mass mobilization. That such mobilization may be under consideration is apparent from the Kavkaz-2016 and other military exercises in 2016 where Moscow mobilized forces from the Ministry of Interior, banks to pay soldiers’ wages in the fields, and hospitals to provide field hospitals, as well as entire provincial civilian administrations. Russia is apparently thinking about possible protracted contingencies, and is returning to fantasies of a Soviet-type military and mobilization effort.

Second, as part of that military process in 2016-2017, Moscow created the 1st Guards Tank Army, the 40th Army, and the 8th Army, and deployed them all around Ukraine’s borders. The 8th Army headquarters is at Rostov-On-Don, from where it could strike toward the Caucasus if necessary, or be air or sealifted to the Middle East. Moreover, any of these armies could quickly be moved toward Belarus to put down unrest there, if Belarus’ government cannot or will not do so. In addition, as David Batashvili notes, Russia has created four new divisions: the 150th Motorized Rifle Division in the Rostov region, the 10th Armored Division and the 3rd Mechanized Division in the Voronezh region, and the 144th Motorized Rifle Division near Smolensk. They will be headquartered fifty, forty-five, and 255 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, respectively. In addition, the headquarters of the Russian 20th Army has been moved closer to Ukraine, from its former base east of Moscow to Voronezh. And three motorized rifle brigades that were previously located deep inside Russian territory, near Kazakhstan and in the Volga Basin, are also being shifted westward. They will be based in the Belgorod, Bryansk, and Voronezh regions, all less than fifty kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

More recent deployments are even more ominous. On March 8, Moscow announced that the Russian Navy would prioritize ships capable of carrying troops that can perform amphibious operations, which could easily be used against Ukraine, the Balkans, the Caucasus, or in the Middle East. On the weekend of March 24, observers recorded dozens of tanks deploying at Pokrovskoye in the southern Rostov-On-the Don region near Ukraine. At the same time, Russia deployed airborne forces (VDV) to Belarus, making it impossible for Ukraine to reroute forces from its north to its threatened southern frontier around Mariupol. And those VDV forces also clearly threaten an invasion of Belarus.

Cyber strikes are also continuing, as David Batashvili notes. Russia staged 6,500 cyberattacks against various Ukrainian institutions, including the defense and finance ministries and the treasury, in November and December 2016. Hackers also targeted Kyiv’s power grid, which resulted in a blackout in parts of the capital. One year before that, the first known power outage as a result of a cyberattack occurred when Russian hackers took down the power grid in western Ukraine in December 2015.

There has also been a steady escalation in the number and size of Russian forces’ ceasefire violations since the beginning of 2017. During March 12-20 alone, there were 336 attacks that killed nine Ukrainian soldiers and wounded thirty-five. And on March 23, former Russian Duma member Denis Voronenkov was murdered in broad daylight in Kyiv and the Kharkiv munitions plant exploded, suggesting a return to state-sponsored terrorist attacks in Ukraine.

All of these actions, taken with the impending August/September Zapad-2017 exercise in Belarus, give rise to fears of a new intervention either in Ukraine, Belarus, or even the Caucasus, based on recent Russian deployments and actions. Moreover, Putin’s domestic room for maneuver has narrowed and economic reform or growth is unlikely. In addition, the army is experiencing manpower shortages and the Russian defense budget has probably reached the limits of its present capacity. It is possible that Putin feels pressed to strike sooner rather than later, especially if he wants to create a cause that justifies large-scale mobilization in advance of the 2018 elections, where he will emphasize Russia’s superpower status. It is likely that a period of maximum danger to Ukraine, Belarus, or the Caucasus is approaching.

I never said or implied that Ukrainians don’t speak Ukrainian; of course they do. They ALSO speak Russian.

Are you claiming that most Ukrainians don’t in fact have the ability to understand and speak Russian fluently? Are you claiming that there aren’t millions of Ukrainians who speak Russian regularly, on a widespread basis? Ukrainians and Russians, please weigh in here.

I’m not a “techie”, and the identity of my many European-born acquaintances is of course none of your business.

What specifically would you have me do to the jackass with the sign? Would you bail me out of jail or pay my hospital bills if things went awry and he and his crew beat me up? Would you restore me to my job, which I could risk by getting into a street brawl? Would you expect things to go well for me if I initiate a confrontation and then face a Trump-hating LA prosecutor and a Trump-hating LA jury?

I’ve got my own beauty already, my wife. Not sure what in the world you are talking about anyway with this pageant business, as it relates to me rather than Trump.

We do hope to vacation with the family in Russia someday, but there are many destinations higher on the list, including the places where our immediate families live and the countries whose languages our children are learning.

We could make a detour to your town and beat your faggot ass even sillier, “little suchka.”

Let me guess how many times you have ever called a large man “little” anything in person, my armchair-warrior tough guy.

I don’t know if anyone is “searching” for Russia, but if they do, their task is not that difficult – it’s the biggest thing on the map, even someone like you should be able to find it. As for the intentions of those searching for Russia, they would be well advised to consider their next steps after they find it – something Napoleon and Hitler were not too careful about and eventually it cost them dearly.

Regarding the current situation where US is pretending to be the defendor of Ukraine, it must have been really hard for them to sit and wait for 300 years while their Ukrainian brothers suffered under Russian oppression. Luckily for the Ukrainians, US eventually picked up their cause and now they are in position to reverse a long history of Russian mistreatment of Ukraine.

dear avery: i didn’t say Trump had committed crimes against humanity like the others on the list. I simply said he uses the same time-worn tricks: “generate fear of the other by appealing to the racist, xenophobic soul of the people and you will succeed.”
though if given half a chance …..
btw, I am not an American, nor an Israeli, as someone else suggested. in fact perhaps the biggest problem the U.S. faces right now is the ultra-right wing Zionist nutjob neocons who have hijacked its foreign policy. on that score, I agree with mearsheimer and walt, and others of their ilk.

annamaria: i’m no fan blitzer, cheney or the Clintons, which is why i said a “modicum.” nor I am I an Israeli, or an American or a jew for that matter. I am Canadian. the Doctorow article merely shows that Russians are used to that level of violence. my point exactly.

But Dostoyevsky about the Sistine Madonna ““the greatest revelation of the human spirit”:
“What beauty, innocence and sadness in that heavenly countenance, what humility and suffering in those eyes. Among the ancient Greeks the powers of the divine were expressed in the marvellous Venus de Milo; the Italians, however, brought forth the true Mother of God – the Sistine Madonna.”
And the Italian architects who built the Kremlin (and probably the iconic St. Basil Cathedral), the Winter Palace? The Fioravanti, Solari, Ruffo, the two Rastrelli, Trezzini, Quarenghi, Rossi?
Let’s not talk about the Academy, Leibniz, Euler, Bernoulli.

{ “generate fear of the other by appealing to the racist, xenophobic soul of the people and you will succeed.”}

Dear egon krenz:

Please give us some examples of President Trump allegedly ‘appealing the racist, xenophobic soul of the people’.
Please be as specific as you can.

And: {Although I despise the Trumpians,…}
What is a, quote, ‘Trumpian’?
Those who voted for Trump?

btw: xenophobia is another one of those globalist made up words using the suffix phobia (fear) to mentally disarm opponents of globalism, and convince them that they have some kind of a mental defect.
Once they convince you (generic you) that you have a mental defect, you will be ready to take the pills the globalists prescribe for you.

It is very normal for normal people to be cautious of strangers.
It is clearly not fear: it is a healthy caution, suspicion, mistrust…..until good intentions, credentials are established.

Normal people trust their immediate family, close friends, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers, etc……before they trust or have dealings with complete strangers.

You, I presume, not being xenophobic allow complete strangers to walk in off the street and live in your house, eat in your kitchen, use your property – Do you ?

Hmm it would seems to a sane person that you have a vested interest in putting all the blame on Russia, rather than the 24/7 propaganda “its all Putin’s fault” or good old Vicky the C.I.A. and the illegal regime change coup (color revolution financed by the west in the Ukraine), than factor in the U.S. and NATO on the Russian borders like cur dogs barking at the bear, and just what would you expect Russia to do, as far as the Ukraine they have now made that into little more than a failed third world country, as they say be careful of what you wish for and their wish has now come true…

dear seraphim: as I said to others above, I am neither an Israeli, or an American or a Jew for that matter. I am Canadian.
and I don’t know anything about your statement: “the organizers and executioners of millions of Russians were Jews,” but I would be interested in reading about it. what are your sources for that?

dear avery: trump’s entire candidacy for republican leadership and presidency were based on anti-Mexican and anti-muslim fear mongering — building a wall to keep Mexicans out and preventing muslim immigration. I would classify that as “appealing to the racist, xenophobic soul of the American people.” I, and most normal north americans, have a healthy caution when it comes to strangers — waiting for some evidence of good will before trusting them. trump and his racist coterie assumes all Mexicans and muslims are bad because they are Mexican and muslim — end of story.

Aren’t you going a little over the top with the Trump supporters, while true I sit out the last election (first time in 60 years) for the simple reason that neither candidate filled the bill (hell they haven’t since 63 but you go with what you have). but I know many who voted for him, and Muslim and Mexico played a very small part in it, but the corruption of the Clintons and her cackling about we came we saw he died left a long lasting image of just how deranged she really was.
Hell I have worked with both Muslim’s and Mexicans and found both have the same hopes and dreams every human has, the Muslim hating come from Bush the Stupid and his lap dogs in the media and Iraq, and the Mexicans from holes left in the border due to NAFTA and the fact that the government encouraged the illegals with free health food stamps and all the rest for cheap labor, while our middle class was gutted when they sent the manufacturing out of the country and probably anyone but Clinton would have carried the day, so we get what we deserve in a declining empire and decaying society Trump…

True – I think (other than what gets amplified in Internet forums and by the media) that most people were just simply tired of what they were offered by the establishment and the elite.

Mexico didn’t play a huge part and Muslims played even a lesser role in most people’s decisions. And I say that as a Muslim – I was pretty disappointed that so many Muslims thought it was all about them. I was telling them, guys – we may be a nuisance but we’re honestly not that important in the lives of day-to-day Americans.

{trump and his racist coterie assumes all Mexicans and muslims are bad because they are Mexican and muslim — end of story.}

Dear [egon krenz]: not end of story; not quite. NOT by a long shot.
I will respond to your post in a little bit, but please, pretty please – let us know:

1) Do you have a door in the dwelling you currently live in?
2) If yes, why do you have a door? why not let anyone off the street just walk in? Is it locked? Why is it locked? Why not let everybody in?
3) Do you have a car? do you leave the windows open and the ignition key in, so that anyone can take your car and drive it away?
4) Do you have any personal property that you leave out in the open for complete strangers to take as they please? Like you know, your wallet with wads of cash in it? Yes? No?

Note: you carefully avoided answering this that I posted above:

{You, I presume, not being xenophobic allow complete strangers to walk in off the street and live in your house, eat in your kitchen, use your property – Do you ?}

I don’t think I said or implied that Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language. I think that may be true only in the Crimea, which is no longer part of Ukraine anyway, in the Donbass region, and perhaps the southeast generally. One of our Russian or Ukrainian commenters here can clarify.

I must apologize for the typo. It should have been ‘the organizers and executioners of the massacres of millions of Russians’.
The sources are plentiful. The subject is taboo.
Try these ones and work it out from there:

“The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia’s Early Soviet Regime. Assessing the Grim Legacy of Soviet Communism”, by Mark Weber
@http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_weber.html

“Stalin’s Jews. We mustn’t forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish”, by Sever Plocker
@http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html

Disagree. The need to fight back against the mass colonization of our country by Mexicans played a substantial part in my decision to vote Trump, as did his recognition that Muslims pose a particular threat. (Certainly my vote for Trump was NOT motivated by his seeming approval of our growing surveillance / police state, by his confused views on drug prohibition, or by his appointment of an attorney general whose intolerance and ignorance on marijuana policy (and apparent ignorance of the Tenth Amendment) is a strike against him.)

And again, you are a brilliant apologist and advocate for Muslims as you try to Islamize my country and the other Western countries. You slip in the utterly misleading characterization that Muslims are merely “a nuisance.” Tell that to the people in San Bernardino, in Orlando, and all the other places where Muslims — raised or converted — murdered non-Muslim Americans.

In fairness to Trump he did specify that it was the illegal, undocumented and criminal Mexicans that he wanted removed. I also heard him say that Mexicans were lovely people, by which I assumed he meant law abiding Mexicans.

With regards to Muslims, again I heard him say that we were told that Muslims were behind the attacks on the towers yet since then immigration of Muslims to America had only increased. He said it made no sense and should stop until we can figure out what is going on.

Do you disagree with any of that?

Not being an American I don’t vote in US elections but if I did I would have voted DT not because I liked him, I don’t – I still don’t trust him, but because I thought that a HRC presidency would have been much, much worse.

Had I voted for him I would be more and more disillusioned and disappointed by the day.

Russia did not inherit the Roman Religion but that of Byzantium. There is a very large difference.

If Russia doesn’t need a war, then Putin needs to get out of Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Syria. He also needs to stay out of Libya. He’s too arrogantly stupid to do these things, and all he’s doing is setting up Russia for the break up of the USSR phase II.

Russia’s primary roots are in Muscovy, not Kyivan Rus. Muscovy was dominated by the Mongols for several centuries, and Putin’s attitudes have been conditioned by that inheritance.

Fool Russia neither needs or wants a war, and as far as the Crimea forget it that’s gone forever, as far as the rest of the Ukraine its nothing but a mess, surviving on handouts from the IMF Germany and any other place they can get one, much like Greece. As far as Syria Russia was asked to intervene we weren’t, we simply invaded yet ANOTHER sovereign nation while we are killing in Iraq Syria Yemen Africa Libya and any other country that comes to mind, and there will be no break up of the Russian Federation that’s a wet dream, the only break up will be the Ukraine and that’s a good thing as its craved up by Poland Romania and another part voting to go into the Russian Federation..

Both these sentiments go hand in hand. If Muslims are supposed to get registered or otherwise extra surveillance then you need to expand the police state.

as you try to Islamize my country

Am I supposed to say sorry for keeping my marriage together, having kids and teaching them the skills to have robust families going forward? Not happening. Feel free to advocate that Article 6 make an exception to the ‘no religious test’ clause specifically for Muslims. Then you won’t have to worry so much.

Muslims are merely “a nuisance.”

A person who is healthy can easily fight off a cold or flu or minor infection. For one whose immune system is completely compromised, those can be deadly. The fact that people are pissing in their pants over 5% Muslim populations says a whole lot more about their state of affairs than the Muslims.

Muslims — raised or converted — murdered non-Muslim Americans

The likelihood of you getting killed by your co-worker going postal is magnitudes higher than by a terrorist. But keeping them very high in everybody’s thoughts is absolutely essential to the expansion of the police state. I highly suggest that the US re-orient their foreign policy – I mean unless you think it is actually working. There are far too many angry young men and they are not listening to reason or religious proscription on this type of behavior; in other words, keeping your dogs on a leash will help us keep ours on a leash.

Also, your homeboy ain’t delivering:
“A statement from the Saudis said that the prince considers Trump ‘a true friend of Muslims’ and that the meeting marked a ‘significant shift in relations’ across all fields. A White House statement, issued Wednesday, said that Trump and Salman had directed their teams to find ways ‘to further strengthen and elevate the United States-Saudi strategic relationship’ on the political, military, security, economic, cultural and social fronts.”

dear noseytheduke: i don’t really disagree with anything you wrote. you can look at what trump has said literally or metaphorically — i.e. the subtext, the intent, the speaking in code, etc. and you are right that he never said “all mexicans” or “all muslims” though i would argue the intent of what he did say was to get people to think that he was going after them and he was going to be tough about it. i’m not american either, and i supported bernie sanders big time. i probably couldn’t have brought myself to vote for Hillary, though i would never have supported Trump either. that said, by rigging the democratic nomination for hillary and squelching the Sandernistas, the democrats deserve to spend some time on the sidelines to lick their corrupt wounds.
i think it’s the nature of politicians these days to make lots of vague promises that people can interpret any way they like, which is why, like you, so many people become disappointed and disillusioned. i was never more optimistic about U.S. politics than when Obama was elected. sadly, he disappointed, although, on balance, i believe he was the best president the U.S. has had since at least Kennedy, if not FDR.
Politicians are almost never as bad or as good as the various groups in society think they will be. So Trump may not end up being quite as bad as most on the left think. in fact, could he really be worse than Dubya, who was in bed with the neocons? through him, they staged a silent coup and took control of the U.S. government, largely from Tel Aviv, who arguably even staged 9/11 as a false flag. then there was Ronald Reagan, the guy who is most responsible for ending the FDR “new deal” Keynesian era of U.S. politics and turning the U.S. into a Friedman-inspired neoliberal free-for-all where the rich truly do get richer and fewer and the poor poorer and more numerous. look where that has led us.
I welcome Trump’s less hardline approach to Russia and think he is less likely than Hillary and her neocons to lead the U.S. into another insane, dangerous economy-destroying war like Iraq. If he is somewhat fiscally responsible and doesn’t let his religious right wing push him too far on social policy, he may end up being ok. that said, since he is the pure distillation of ego — a somewhat dumb rich kid who has never been told no by anyone — he is likely to fall on his own sword at some point. with much of his own party, and virtually all democrats, hating him, his odds of success are pretty narrow. such is life in modern day america.

Have you personally provided sanctuary to any illegal Mexicans in your Canadian home?
Are any radical Islamists living in your Canadian home at this time?

When you provide shelter to those groups of people in your Canadian home, feed and cloth them, have them sleep in your bedroom……..then come and lecture Americans about ‘racism’, ‘xenophobia’ (sic), and all that.

that’s an absurd point. do you have illegal mexicans or radical islamists sleeping in your bedroom? of course not; nor do i. but there are plenty of muslims — and even mexicans — living peacefully in canada and in my neighbourhood and they are no threat to me, other canadians or canadian culture.
a lot of americans have been brainwashed to believe “the other” are to be feared.”they are stealing our jobs, raping our women, etc.” it’s a divide and conquer tactic to get people at each others’ throats so they don’t notice they are being robbed blind by the ruling elite. truth is, the american elite let immigrants in to do the jobs americans weren’t willing to do. and when they are allowed in but not given citizenship, they are forced to work for much less money, so double benefit. some are criminals, true, but so are some americans. however most are law abiding, peace loving people, like most americans. they don’t necessarily look like white americans, or have exactly the same customs or ways. but at the root, they are just people looking to make the best of things and live in peace. and, besides, americans are almost infinitely more likely to be killed by one of their own via gun violence, or in a car accident. terrorism kills almost nobody in the U.S.
the far larger problem america faces is the enemy within — the deep, unresolved racial problem that started when an american elite from a previous generation decided to forcibly capture, import and enslave black africans for a couple of hundred years, getting extremely wealthy off their labour in the process. it’s about 150 years since slavery was formally abolished, but the racial problem continues because blacks were never really granted equal rights — only nominally in law, and by then, it was a little too difficult to catch up. white americans are to blame for the racial problem and they should be responsible for resolving it. and shooting unarmed black people for no reason and unleashing paramilitary forces on them when they protest against such incidents just isn’t going to cut it.

Quartermaster has cognitive neglect for Ukraine becoming a Kaganate of Nuland under Groisman. According to Quartermaster, it is Mr. Groisman, Mr. Kolomojsky and such that have “primary roots” in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Romania, Poland, and Hungary have some geographical questions about certain territories that were annexed by the Soviet Union and allotted to Ukraine. Is Quartermaster ready to return the territories to the former rightful owners?
“Today’s territory of Zakarpattia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary since its foundation in the year 1000.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarians_in_Ukraine

I agree with the main thesis of Saker that Russia today under President Putin is slowly moving towards discovering itself as a culture as a civilization separate from Western Europe, as a civilization that is unique in combining Orthodox Christian tradition and the oriental influences of Eurasia.
However, I disagree with a simplistic notion that in 1917 a change occurred from one Westernized elite to another Westernized elite. In fact the process of Russia defining itself separately from Europe has begun under Nicholas I and then accelerated under Alexander the III. This is the time in the 1880s when attempts were made to define nationality, orthodoxy and monarchy as three foundations of Russia. The search for pre-Petrine Russia was in vogue. In fact when Alexander II was killed the Church on Skilled Blood in Sankt Petersburg was built in old Russian slyle like St. Basil in Moscow. This was and still is the only church in Sankt Petersburg in old Russian style. The process of rediscovering the pre-Petrine authentic Russia continued under Nicholas II. He in fact was the first Russian Emperor since Alexey who was a genuine believe an Orthodox Russian Tsar. Moreover he distrusted Europeanized bureaucracy and believed that he had a deep personal understanding of the Russian people. The reason he disliked the Duma and the modern institutions was precisely because they were too Western for him. He really adored pre-Petrine Russia a genuine Russia in his view.
Moreover during that time great Russian religious philosophers defined Russia in fundamentally new ways. Petr Struve starting as a Marxist praised Russian gosudrastvennost and scolded Russian Westernized intelligentsia. Nikolay Berdyaev, Sergey Bulgakov, Fedor Dostoevsky explained to the world what Russian idea is, rooted in Orthodoxy, in Sobornost, a term that is impossible to translate into English. It signifies a Russian unity, in faith, a collectivity and sharing, a faith that is not connected to reasoning as in the West. Dostoevsky spoke of pochvanichestvo meaning rootedness of Russian culture. None of that was ever understood in the West. This generation of Russian thinkers and philosophers and writers actually explained quite well Russian civilization, its meaning and its values, its faith and its separate course.
Russia may have been governed by a Westernized elite but a great and ghrowing part of the educated society was increasingly rediscovering its own Russian identity.
If we consider Russian peasants in early 20th century the 130 million of them then of course there is no doubt that they were living in their own world pretty much a pre-Petrine non westernized world. As I wrote in my book Russia After Lenin, on the 1920s even then Russian peasants could not possibly comprehend what the Bolsheviks were talking about using the words proletariat socialism, etc. They lived in their world of sacred icons, and holy wells, and a miracle making old men a world defined by grain growing as it has been for hundreds of years. Moreover, even among the Socialists the largest political party that of Socialist Revolutionaries, was profoundly anti0Western anti-Marxist and anti-Capitalist. They dreamed of free peasant communes without the landlords. In 1917 they were the largest political party in Russia of one million members and they were the ones who won the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
So the notion that Russia was Western in early 20th century is not quite correct. The Tsar was the first Orthodox monarch who despised Western educated bureaucracy and cherished old Russia, educated society was moving in the seek roots direction and the overwhelming majority of the population the peasants were still in their traditional world.

Note “The Saker” is not Russian, just some of his ancestor were, he is a Swiss living in the USA, so you would expect from him a lot of Western mythology about Russia multiplied by his own idiosyncratic deranged ideas.

It is very naive to believe sincerely what Putin says, he is a master of deception and lie. Never take his words at the face value.

Also I’m not sure what impresses you so much, but many Russians consider his speeches utterly plain, boring and bureaucratic, typical Soviet mumbo jumbo, and his TV show aka “Putin online” is also extremely boring, you cannot listen to him seriously while he answers. Whatever the question is he never answers straight and open, but dodges it with a lot of demagoguery and lie.

on Communism being a Western ideology, promoted by Western powers, fails to me taking into account the so harshly this ideology and followers have been prosecuted, slandered and finally erased from the surface of Earth by, preciselly, all Western powers that be, but mainly by the main promoter of so called Western ideology, the US.

They persecuted it on their own soil because they knew the ideology is very self-destructive for them, but they favored it for the others, especially their adversaries for the very same reason that it would destruct them, which was successfully done with the Russian Empire. It can even be said Communism was deliberately created as a self-destructive force directed to the enemies, but never for themselves. Note Communism was practically created in the UK by one German Jew and one German capitalist, and all pre-1917 communists saw the UK as their safe haven (along with Switzerland), but never ever the UK allowed Communists to take ground in the country itself. Instead, the UK government oppressed UK Communists very harshly. The same was in the USA, where they practically destroyed and banned any Communists during 1918-1920. Do you really believe that if they thought Communism was destructive and then it made Russia lacking behind, they should destroy it and let Russia leap forward? Of course not, who would want a new strong adversary when you may have a weak one, which is destroying and harming itself with an idiotic self-destructive ideology. The only thing the USA, UK and the West ever wanted that Communism never come to them but they were not that strongly against that Communism was undermining Russia as well as China. Moreover, I would say Communism is an ideal crypto-colonial regime. You have one super-monopolist, that is the state, who exploits its citizens much harsher and ruthless than the Western capitalists could ever allow for themselves, and for that you got your trade and resources very cheaply. The USSR traded very actively with the West, mostly with raw resources. In turn the capitalists provided the USSR with industry and technology, namely the Americans participated very actively in the 1930s in the creation of the Soviet heavy industry which in turn helped in the war with Germany. The Americans and the British just used the USSR for their own means as a fighting ground and cannon fodder against Germany. Later they were not that happy when the USSR meddled in the former colonies and the Western spheres of influence, yet, the containment was quite enough, they hardly ever wanted the destruction of the USSR. Why, again, if capitalism is better and makes countries more prosperous, to allow Russia be rich and prosperous, hence a very strong competitor?

The fact that a book like ‘Everyday Saints’ and a movie like ‘The Island’ are so popular in Russia tells me everything I need to know about what a great country Russia is.

Never heard about the book, but 2 million imprints is less than 2% of the Russian readership population, that is a normal number for Christian fundamentalists in a country, but how does it make Russia great? “The Island” is a decent movie, but have other countries never made such psycological dramas?

Most Russian homicides are domestic, like two alcoholics start a political dispute and one cut his “friend” with a knife, or a wife kills his alcoholic husband, or other such accidents of the lowlife. In the USA most homicides are gun and gang related, which means you have a good chance to be killed on a street in a shoot-out, or during a robbery, or simply by going to a “wrong” hood.

The Crimean War was started by the Ottomans which declared war on Russia pushed by the British. It was not a ‘reaction to the occupation of Bessarabia’ for the simple reason that Bessarabia was a Russian possession from 1812. You mean the Danubian Principalities, but we know that British knowledge of these remote parts of the world are limited to Transylvania of Dracula (in fact Lloyd George did not know even where Transylvania was located!).

The best proof of that is that guy Philip, who has no idea where Bessarabia is, yet has an opinion and even claims he’s lived in Russia and thus knows a thing or two about the country. But even a personal experience does not prevent Westerners from being utterly arrogant and ignorant idiots when it concerns Russia, on the contrary it boosts their ego and makes them even more arrogant.

one of the original practitioners of ‘toxic racial hatred’ were the Mongols, who murdered upwards of 100 million people (estimated), mostly Caucasians/Caucasoids. So that there is no misunderstanding, Mongols are not Europeans.

How could 100,000 men (very optimistic figure for the whole Mongol army) exterminate 100 millions, let alone 1 million? It’s astonishing how people still believe in fairly tales.

Yet, that dear czar Vladimir, the savior of the Russian people, cares little about defending the children of his own people. When an Uzbek jihadi nanny beheaded a Russian girl, Putin just deported that monster home because of her “insanity” where she could be free from a mental asylum in a year or so. Putin is a most disgusting hypocrite.

Well, “Siberians” aka the Huns just caused the others to move around including those Franks from Franconia (in today Germany) and the Slavs. I think there is no direct descendants of the Huns, though they must have left their genetic traces all around the way right to France.

“Russians are backward people.”
Guess this voice from Israel makes a clear distinction between they “chosen” that used to live or still live in Russia and “others.”

But she has some points. Depending on what we define as “backward”. The overall quality of “things” and the comfort of life is much better in the West than in Russia, most Russian cities look like the poor ghettos in the West. Russian villages are even worse. Bearing in mind that everything is made by people there must be something wrong with Russians as a people if they cannot created a decent living space wherever they go. For example, the Germans can do that, even German villages in Siberia are strikingly different from Russian ones. Or you may see that striking difference in numerous German settlements across Latin America, local Mestizos live in their ugly shantytowns, the Germans live in their neat accurate villages like they have never left Germany.

I don’t think I said or implied that Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language. I think that may be true only in the Crimea, which is no longer part of Ukraine anyway, in the Donbass region, and perhaps the southeast generally. One of our Russian or Ukrainian commenters here can clarify.

By rough estimates 70% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their native first everyday language. The only exception are the far western regions. The only thing that Ukrainian nationalists can present to disproof that is their sham rigged census of 2001 which in the contrary showed that 70% of the Ukrainian citizens speak Ukrainian natively. While the very important thing to always bear in mind is that (post-)Soviet people have a very weird and twisted understanding of self-identification, they think if they report being “ethnic Ukrainian” (because in their Soviet passports they were defined as such) then they ought to report their native language as Ukrainian even if the speak Russian 90% of the time their whole life. After 2014 many even claim they will learn their “native” Ukrainian and forget “non-native” Russian as a sign of their ostentatious patriotism. Ukraine is a unique country in the world where language schizophrenia is a massive and pervasive mental illness.

When you start blaming Russians for their “wrong” ways of thinking because of “the Saker”, just stop for a moment and try to investigate who that “Saker” guy is. It may turn out his way of thinking is very typical for the Westerners, because, well, “the Saker” is Swiss, not Russian.

Don’t you see this guy is a perfect model example of so called “liberals”? He just repeats typical leftist media mumbo jumbo. You may argue with CNN or NYT with the same effect. Being Canadian makes him even worse, Canada is a very well known realm of triumphant oppressive “liberalism” with no alternatives.

Point is taken.
But here is a relevant Q: are Americans backward? (Picture midwest and deep south). Are Jews from the former USSR in Israel or American Jews in Brooklyn backward? Just to make you think about the word “backward.”

” you will notice that I did place the roots of the modern western civilization in the Middle-Ages, not in antiquity. The reason for this is the fact that when the Franks finally conquered the western Roman Empire they destroyed it to such a degree that the era following the collapse of the western Roman Empire is called the “Dark Ages” (Russia, by the way, never went through this millennium of darkness and, hence, she never had any need for any “renaissance” or “re-birth”). Contrary to the official historical narrative, the current western civilization has never had any roots in the Roman Empire, and even less so, Greek antiquity. The true founders of the “western world” were, in so many ways, the Franks”

I’m french and my wife is italian.
Obviously you know nothing about european history.
You live in dreams & a fantasy world.
That a stupid narrative, not history.

- At the Battle of Watling Street Roman legions of about 10,000 men slaughtered about 100,000 of Queen Bodica’s fighters and their families (who had come with them to the battle site): this was done in a day or two.

- At the Siege of Baghdad, which lasted about 2 weeks, Mongol forces killed about 50,000 defending soldiers of Baghdad and (average) estimated 1,000,000 (yeah, One Million) civilians.

Lots of other similar examples.

The Mongol Empire exited 300+ years.
Average it out, homes.

{It’s astonishing how people still believe in fairly tales.}
What is astonishing is how uninformed some people are.
Even more astonishing is the uninformed pretending to know something they clearly don’t, and ignorantly lecturing others.

Anyway, glad to see you’re still around after threatening to ditch this site.

Commenting here becomes an obsession. I don’t know why but I like reading and commenting just right here on this site, even though there is a lot of such places in the net. It just sometimes becomes a little tiresome and time consuming, so I question myself why to give my opinions of which only a couple of people may care about. The only excuse left is I’m training to express my thoughts in English, though with the number of words and the time consumed I might have written a book already, but for a book I have to have an idea and a talent, which I lack, but reading here always provokes some thoughts which I cannot help but express.

So you’ve just brought up some more ancient fairy tales from ancient chronicles, from the times when chroniclers cared little about facts, but more than often created fiction, from the times when people did not know and did not care about real demographics and casualty counts, especially for the enemies. No modern historian takes those ancient figures at the face value, the rule of thumb is to divide them by ten at least. Even today with our technologies we are often cannot get the right figures for casualties, but you believe wholeheartedly the accounts written hundreds and thousands years ago. Not to mention chroniclers were never neutral and they always skewed the facts to fit their agenda. I wonder why you also do not believe wholeheartedly such sources as CNN, or you do, really?

Yes, of course: Putin has nothing better to do than get involved in the case of the murder of a Russian child by a mentally unstable woman.

Yet, he found it was a proper thing for him to do to comment about that raping case. Is he a president of Austria or Russia? And when it suits him he is eager to meddle in with justice, but here he decided not to do that. And even if he is not supposed to do anything everybody know that everything in the country is under his control, every judge and the whole legal system, especially in such an outrageous unprecedented case, and if the judges failed to lock up that monster for life it was rather a failure of the whole regime, or rather it was deliberately done so. Yes, of course, for Putin Austrian raped boys are more important than beheaded Russian toddlers.

But here is a relevant Q: are Americans backward? (Picture midwest and deep south).

Of course they are if they are indeed that bad as most of Russia. But I believe the contrast is drawn across the racial lines. But I offer you a comparison experiment. You even do not have to travel around. Thanks to Google Maps, you can pick out any place in America and just “walk around”, and then do this with Russia. Very impressive is the contrast between small settlements like from 1,000 to 10,000 people. But even with more populous areas the contrast is striking, some American cities with like 200,000 people may have skyscrapers. For Russia such cities are provincial backwaters.

Are Jews from the former USSR in Israel or American Jews in Brooklyn backward?

Know little about Israel or Brooklyn Jews. I heard the areas full of the Earlocks are quite dirty. As well I heard Brighton Beach is very sovok.

Just to make you think about the word “backward.”

I’ll give you some more common knowledge. There are levels of such backwardness. And Russia is not on the bottom but rather decent. I think the most backward in that respect are the Indian subcontinent, the most renown and most disgusting dump in the world. Then goes most of Africa and a great bulk of Latin America. Most of Asia are a dump except for East Asia and some spots of wealth and prosperity like the Gulf Arabs, Brunei, or Singapore. Only then goes Russia and the FSU, followed by Eastern Europe. And then going west you’ll know when you reach the real center of the modern civilization.

Yes, indeed the ‘roots’ of the ‘modern West’ are in the alliance between the Franks and the Papacy against the Roman Empire (improperly called Byzantine) initiated by the ‘Donation of Pepin the Short’ (in fact earlier) which created the Papal State and cemented by the blessing by the Pope of the usurpation of the Imperial title by Charlemagne in 800.
What is always pushed under the carpet in the description of these fateful events is the role played by the Judaising influences which fashioned the ‘Medieval’ pseudo-Catholic mentality (and of the Reformation, make no mistake, Calvin was French).

{No modern historian takes those ancient figures at the face value, …}

“No modern historian…” ?
Really?
You have consulted _all_ modern historians?

{…..the rule of thumb is to divide them by ten at least.}

Who came up with that rule of thumb: You?
Why not 20, or 100?

So according to your rule of thumb there were no 300 or so Spartans at Thermopylae: there were only 30. Yes?
(yes, yes I know: there were also ~700 Thespians and ~400 Thebans there.)
(or was it 70 and 40, respectively.)

Well, the truth is that the “Czar” never made any claim to the “Roman Empire”. The “Moscow Third Rome” myth is a Western construct for which some members of the Russian ‘intelligentsiya’ fell but never had any currency with the Czars who were satisfied to be just “Emperor of All Russia, Empress of All Russia” (Russian: Императоръ Всероссійскій, Императрица Всероссійская, Imperator Vserossiyskiy, Imperatritsa Vserossiyskaya).
Full title:
By the Grace of God, We, NN, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Chersonese Taurian, Tsar of Georgia; Lord of Pskov and Grand Prince of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, Finland; Prince of Estland, Livland, Courland, Semigalia, Samogitia, Belostok, Karelia, Tver, Yugorsky land, Perm, Vyatka, Bolgar and others; Lord and Grand Prince of Nizhny Nogorod, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersk, Udorsky land, Obdorsk, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav, and all of the northern countries Master; and Lord of Iberia, Kartli, and Kabardia lands and Armenian provinces; Circassian and Mountainous Princes and their Hereditary Lord and Owner; Lord of Turkestan; Norwegian Heir; Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Dithmarschen, and Oldenburg, and others, and others, and others.

Of course, not every, but those who write about historical demographics and military logistics. But you may continue to take ancient fairy tales at face value.

So according to your rule of thumb there were no 300 or so Spartans at Thermopylae: there were only 30. Yes?

You know, you’ve brought in a very good example. There is nothing wrong with 300 Spartans, or even 3,000 Greeks overall, those were decent and plausible numbers for those times, but you must know Herodotus claimed the Persians had 2.6 million. So according to you we must believe him without doubt, when the whole Persian empire might be 25 million, so the Persians mustered a half of their adult male population, while the population of Ancient Greece is estimated to be from 1 to 3 million.

Use of multiple, non-Anonymous handles for commenting on this webzine is strongly discouraged, and your secret (real or fictitious) email allows you to authenticate your commenter-identity, preventing others from assuming it, accidentally or otherwise.

Therefore, keeping your Name+Email combination is important, and the 'Remember' feature saves it for you as a cookie on your device/browser.

Also, activating the 'Remember' feature enables the Agree/Disagree/LOL/Troll buttons on all comments.

Email Replies to my Comment

Body of Comment

Submitted comments become the property of The Unz Review and may be republished elsewhere at the sole discretion of the latter

NoseytheDuke says:
@Herald
It’s odd that this War for Blair Mountain character rails endlessly against those who are destroying “his” nation but then goes on to provide direct assistance to them by validating the lies surrounding their most successful act of war against the American peo...

I have never yet met a structural engineer who bought into the government story. Admittedly my sample size is only 4, but every single one of them told me WTC 7 was a controlled demolition.
All one has to do is watch WTC 7 freefall, knowing that it did not even get hit by a plane, to suspect tha...

Don't say......
Still, as for
..I think we’ll both be happier if his future contributions remain a mystery to me.
apart from some quality information every now and then there is, perhaps, one better reason to read his and similar guys' material.
Recognizing the moment of shift in their a...

The size and strength of the columns decreased with height so that the perimeter steel was more massive at the bottom than the top. Bottom line, the planes at speed PENETRATED. If a plane could crash thru the massive stone façade of the Pentagon it could penetrate the slender steel of the upper...

Right, aluminum cladded and the size and strength of the columns decreased with height so that the perimeter steel was more massive at the bottom than the top. Bottom line, the planes at speed PENETRATED.

I'd say, comparing rhetoric, you are the one lacking an ability to express a cogent argument. Generally, that is a reflection of one's (inferior) intellect. Of course, the possibility you are just playing ignorant also exists. So which is it? Are you going to advance an argument, or should I just...

may I point out that it was the US government (in the person of President Madison) who declared war on Great Britain – not vice versa?
My recollection is that Britain was kidnapping US sailors and forcing them to join the British navy. That strikes me as an act of war, even if they didn't for...

Thank you. Having tried to teach basic math and science to mainstream kids, I conclude most people do not have a sense of proportion that would allow them to understand, nor a basic insight as to the nature of matter and Newton's Laws. For example, when asked, "Why every action has an equal and ...

When my neighbor damages my car with a hammer I blame him - not the hammer. In private I may admire the hammer for fantastic job - and thank it for it's service but not when other hammers are listening. Just to make sure they don't flock to the service of my neighbor for fame and glory!
Your "p...

I was willing to give The Saker the benefit of the doubt with his truculent article, but this link to his blog isn't doing him any favors.
"let me explain why I live in the USA ... Simply put, it is my legal right."
It's my legal right to consort with heroin junkies, or eat dirt, but that's har...

said:
" Every large controlled demolition I witnessed shows massive explosions at ground level. If that had happened it would have shown on the videos that were taken. In addition no one would have been able to escape from the buildings as hundreds did before the collapse. "
Indeed, and that's w...

As someone who served long enough in the U.S. military to have a pension and to be classified as a retired officer, I too find being thanked for my service inappropriate. I feel awkward and embarrassed. I'm too polite to say to people that I wish they wouldn't say that, but that is how I feel.

Wrong. The "facade" was not made of aluminum. The structural steel perimeter columns had an aluminum cladding added to give a shiny appearance, that's all.
Do you believe that those who designed and built the Twin Towers were stark raving mad?